The sun is a dwarf star, sometimes referred to as a yellow dwarf because its surface temperature of 6,000°C produces a soft yellow-white glow. It formed about 4.5 billion years ago and is roughly halfway through its 10-billion-year lifespan. When it burns out, it will become a white dwarf. Stars much larger than the sun move through stellar evolutionary changes more rapidly. Some have already exploded as a supernova and collapsed into a neutron star — so dense that the atoms are crushed — or a black hole, with gravity so intense that even light cannot escape. As far as astronomers know, orange and red dwarfs, like most of our nearest neighbours, have not yet had time to burn out.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the sun — 4.3 light-years away. Even so, travelling at the speed of a Concorde jet, it would take two million years to reach it. A red dwarf, it is bound by gravitation to the double star Alpha Centauri A and B, which it orbits over millions of years.

Alpha Centauri A is a yellow star like our sun and one of the few in the sun's immediate neighbourhood that is visible to the naked eye. Its partner, Alpha Centauri B, is an orange-red dwarf. They revolve around each other every 80 years.

Sirius A (a.k.a. Alpha Canis Majoris), nine light-years from the sun, is the brightest star in the night sky. Not surprisingly, its Greek name means scorching. Also known as the "dog star," its first appearance in the early morning signalled for the Romans the onset of the hottest time of the year and for the Egyptians the imminent flooding of the Nile. It forms a double star with Sirius B, the two revolving around each other. Sirius B has shrunk into a white dwarf whose mass, similar to our sun's, has been crushed into a sphere only three times the Earth's diameter, making it one ten-thousandth the brightness of Sirius A.

Epsilon Eridani, an orange dwarf, is also discernible to the naked eye and was catalogued by the ancient Greeks before the invention of modern telescopes.

Barnard's Star is the fastest-moving of our close neighbours, which suggests that it is an extremely old star — a remnant from the early history of our galaxy, when its shape was more spherical.
Scientists believe that 85 percent of our galaxy is made up of faint stars, such as Ross 128, CD-36 15693, Wolf 359, BD+36 2147, Ross 248, Ross 154, Barnard's Star and the star pair L726-8A and L726-8B — all examples of red and orange dwarfs.