YSES 2b is a background star

Aims. We wish to confirm the nature of YSES 2b, a purportedly faint companion of the young star YSES 2. Methods. We used on-sky observations from SPHERE and GRAVITY to measure the astrometric position of 2b with respect to the star YSES 2, and examined the competing hypotheses of (i) a bound substellar companion versus (ii) a distant unrelated background source with a non-zero proper motion. Results. YSES 2b appears to be a late-type M-dwarf star over 2 kiloparsecs behind the star YSES 2. It has a transverse velocity of ∼300 km s−1 and is located within one of the spiral arms of the Galaxy. The main discriminant was multiple epochs of GRAVITY astrometry that identified the sub-milliarcsecond parallactic motion of the star.