Proxima (2014)

Ceci n’est pas une étoile.

Picture of Proxima Centauri. I’ve been meaning to do a picture like this for a while, now. The confusing nature of astronomical imagery is something I often think about. Here, the actual star is less than a single pixel in apparent width and yet most people understand it to be a picture of a star. It is really a picture of a point spread function. You could get more pedantic than this if you wanted but the simple fact is that this is not a star.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

Red: F814W
Green: pseudo
Blue: F675W

North is 15.12° counter-clockwise from up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.