14 DAY TRIAL // This beautiful new image from the NASA/ESA flagship Hubble Space Telescope shows our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, in amazing detail. The star appears very bright in this photo because it is so close to Earth, and floods Hubble's sensitive detectors with vast amounts of photons.
The image was taken on November 1, 2013, using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument on Hubble. It reveals Proxima Centauri, which is only one of the three celestial fireballs that make up this system. Its other two companions are called Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.
Proxima Centauri has been investigated thoroughly by astronomers, because it lies only 4 light-years away from the Sun. Another reason for receiving a lot of attention is that the object is a flare star, meaning that it exhibits periodic changes in apparent luminosity, Space reports.
These variations are produced by highly-active convection processes within the star. This phenomenon is very likely to give the object a prolonged main sequence, meaning that it will continue to burn stably for billions of years. Our Sun is estimated to conclude its main sequence in about 4.5 to 5 billion years.