A red dwarf from 1000 au would only look like a moderately bright star, won't it?<p>On the other hand, it would be close enough that if aliens inhabited, they could send a probe with present-day human level of technology. That is, the nearby star would serve as a stepping stone and an excuse to bridge the gap to interstellar space. Compare it to our Alpha Centauri, which lies just shy of 300K au, a relatively costly cosmic barrier to entry.<p>But for our neighbourhood, there is still the possibility of a brown dwarf or Jupiter-sized world lurking in the depths of our Oort cloud. Alternative destinations are 500-750au which would be good spots to place a telescope (exploiting the Sun as a gravitational lens) <a href="http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10123" rel="nofollow">http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10123</a> . You need intermediary objectives to make interstellar exploration a more realizable goal.