The Oort star

The "Oort Star" -- Did a Rogue Star Pass Through Our Solar System?A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. While the close flyby of Scholz's star likely had little impact on the Oort Cloud, "other dynamically important Oort Cloud perturbers may be lurking among nearby stars." Currently, Scholz's star is a small, dim red dwarf in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light years away. However, at the closest point in its flyby of the solar system, Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star - about 50 times fainter than can normally be seen with the naked eye at night. Info