A pink dwarf star generally known as Barnard’s star, which lies a mere six light-years from our photo voltaic system, has not less than one — and probably a handful — of small rocky planets orbiting it, a brand new examine suggests.
Barnard’s star, which is about one-sixth the mass of our solar, is the closest particular person star to our photo voltaic system. Solely the three stars within the Alpha Centauri system are nearer. As a consequence of its proximity to Earth, Barnard’s star has lengthy been a goal of astronomers searching for exoplanets (SN: 12/1/73, SN: 12/7/23).
Now, after a number of false begins over the a long time, researchers could lastly have hit pay dust. Jonay González Hernández, an astrophysicist on the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, and his workforce scrutinized greater than 150 observations made by a telescope in South America over the course of 4 years. Particularly, they seemed for tiny wobbles that may betray the presence of planets gravitationally yanking the star from side to side as they orbited.
The strongest wobble takes place each 3.15 days, the workforce stories on-line October 1 in Astronomy & Astrophysics. It most likely is attributable to the near-circular orbit of a small rocky planet about thrice the mass of Mars, says González Hernández.
The researchers have accomplished a superb job of excluding different attainable sources of the wobble, akin to rotation of the star or motion of the telescope throughout observations, says astronomer Jennifer Burt. These efforts, plus the excessive precision of the devices used to gather the workforce’s information, “will persuade scientists that this discovery is actual,” notes Burt, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That, in flip, ought to encourage different groups to revisit the entire previous observations that they’ve fabricated from Barnard’s star.
Certainly, the brand new examine means that there are extra discoveries to be made. González Hernández and his colleagues have famous smaller oscillations which might be superimposed on the bigger wobble. Though they’re but to be confirmed, they doubtless characterize the presence of three smaller orbs circling the star at intervals of two.34 days, 4.12 days and 6.74 days. All 4 of those purported planets are too near Barnard’s star to help life as we all know it, the researchers recommend
