The star 61 Cygni is not bright, nor is it visually distinctive. To the eye alone, it looks just like any other 5th-magnitude point of light deep in the Milky Way flowing through the Swan.

But looks can be deceiving! This unremarkable looking star is indeed quite remarkable for its unusually high rate of proper motion. By watching and plotting it against the backdrop of stars over the course of relatively few years, its position shifts at an extraordinarily fast pace. At present, 61 Cyg has a proper motion of more than 5 arc-seconds per year.

Why so fast? For one, it's nearby. At just 11.4 light years away, 61 Cyg is the 4th closest naked eye star (albeit only from under dark skies) to our solar system. The three closer stars - Alpha Centauri, Sirius, and Epsilon Eridani - don't show such a high rate of motion, however. So again, why 61 Cyg? While those others may be closer, 61's velocity is higher. The system has a net space velocity of 108 km/s relative to the Sun. That causes 61 to really hit the gas and go!

The Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826), who is also credited with discovering the first asteroid (excuse me, "dwarf planet"), Ceres, was also the first to notice 61 Cyg's rapid motion after completing a 10-year study in 1804. Piazzi called it the "Flying Star," a name that sticks to this day.

Curiously, Piazzi made no mention of the fact that 61 Cyg is a binary star, however, even though both stellar members must have been visible through his telescope. It wasn't until 1830 that German astronomer Friedrich von Struve (1793-1864) announced that 61 Cyg was a binary system.

Eight years after Struve, another German astronomer, Friedrich Bessel (1784-1846), measured 61 Cyg's parallax shift, becoming the first to use that trigonometric method to calculate a star's distance. His estimate of 10.4 light years is impressively close to the modern value of 11.4 light years.

We now know that 61 Cygni is a pair of orange (type K) main sequence stars, both of which are smaller, cooler, and older than our Sun. The primary sun, 61 Cygni A, shines at magnitude 5.2, while 61 Cygni B shines at magnitude 6.0. Each is separated from the other by about 30 arc-seconds. I can just make out that 61 is "oval" through my 8x40s, but resolve them in my 10x50s. Others, apparently with sharper eyes and/optics than mine, have reported a clean separation at 8x. Give it a go and post your experiences in this article's discussion forum.

If you can't quite resolve the pair just yet, take comfort in knowing that time is on your side. As the two stars continue in their 650-year orbit of each other, the gap between 61 Cyg A and B will continue to widen from our perspective. As the diagram below shows, the pair will be at their widest in about the year 2100, when the apparent separation will be 34".

The real challenge presented by 61 Cygni is not in splitting the binary, however. Rather, it's monitoring and detecting their collective proper motion over the course of several years. The chart below shows the pair's path from 1900 to 2100. Notice how 61 Cygni A and B passed to either side of an 11th-magnitude field star between 2010 and 2015. That star, GSC 3168:590, actually appeared to lie between the 61 components back in 2011. For a moment, 61 Cyg was a faux triple star system. Again, if you were watching the star during that period, share your experiences in our discussion forum.

The 61 pair has continued on by now, leaving GSC 3168:590 behind. Use the finder chart above to follow the stars' progress by marking their precise locations every year or so. Doing so will let you see for yourself, just as Piazzi saw more than 200 years ago, that 61 Cygni truly is the flying star.

Have a favorite challenge object of your own?  I'd love to hear about it, as well as how you did with this month's test.  Contact me through my web site or post to this e-column's discussion forum.

Remember, half of the fun is the thrill of the chase.  Game on!