Barnard's Star was a star system in the Alpha Quadrant. After Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star was the closest system to Sol. The system was named after the astronomer Barnard, who discovered it in the early 20th century.
This was a single star system consisting of the red dwarf primary Barnard's Star. (ENT: "Cold Front"; TNG: "The Naked Now")
Stellar cartography[]
Barnard's Star was visible from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus. This system was approximately 6 light years from Sol.
Location of Barnard's Star on a United Earth star chart, 2154
In the 2150s, this system's position was labeled on an United Earth star chart which was displayed in several crew and guest quarters aboard the Enterprise. (Star Trek: Enterprise, set decoration)
In 2364, the location of Barnard's Star was labeled in a star chart of a stellar neighborhood with Sol at the center. This chart was stored in the USS Enterprise-D library computer. Later that year, the chart was scanned by Outpost 63. (TNG: "The Naked Now", production art; TNG: "The Last Outpost")
Appendices[]
Background information[]
This star system was only mentioned in writing.
Information on this system was derived from the episodes and films, from the reference works Star Trek: Star Charts and Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library, and from real world sources. The reference works were used extensively in the creation of star charts seen in Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Prodigy, and Star Trek: Lower Decks. The real-world information added to the article was current as of 2025.
This star's quadrant of origin is inferred based on the position of neighboring locations – 61 Cygni, Alpha Centauri, Procyon, Sol, Tau Ceti, and Wolf 359 – as seen in the star charts appearing in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" and in the Star Trek: Picard episode "Maps and Legends".
The star chart was drawn by Rick Sternbach for the reference book Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology (p. 77) in the late 1970s. This chart showed Earth commercial and exploration routes after the use of warp drive began. Barnard's Star was a destination on an exploration route.
The star chart seen in the series Star Trek: Enterprise made its first appearance in Crewman Daniels quarters in "Cold Front". It was also seen in several other episodes of the series, from 2151 to 2154. (For more information, see Federation star charts#United Earth Alpha/Beta star chart)
In 2018, a candidate super-Earth planet named Barnard's Star b was discovered orbiting Barnard's Star. A planet was confirmed to be orbiting this star in 2024. This planet had slightly more mass than Venus and orbited its star every 3.15 Earth days. In March 2025, three more planets were confirmed to be in this system.
External links[]
- Barnard's Star at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- Barnard's Star at Wikipedia
- Barnard's Star at the Internet Stellar Database