Astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star, closest to the Sun.

An international team of astronomers has discovered exoplanet at least half the mass Venus orbiting a star Barnardclosest to our Sun. Scientists do not rule out that there are three more exoplanets in other orbits of the star.

Located just six light years from hereBarnard is the closest single star to us, the fastest in the night sky, and the second closest star system in the area after a group of three stars. Alpha Centauri.

Because of its proximity, the star is a prime target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets, but since 2018, when a team of astronomers discovered a super-Earth orbiting Barnard, no other planets have been discovered in its orbit.

This exoplanet, a super-Earth, three times the mass of Earth and orbiting for about 233 days, had characteristics that made it life is not viable as we know it.

New exoplanet discovered by spacecraft European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT)originally from Chile, “completely different” but equally inhospitable to live in, he explains in a statement to EFE. Alejandro Suarez Mascarenoresearcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) and co-author of the study.

Details about the new planet, named Barnard B.were published in a paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and are the result of observations carried out over the past five years.

“Even though it took us a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” he says. Jonay Gonzalez HernandezIAC researcher and main author of the article.

Around Barnard

The team looked for signs of possible exoplanets inside habitable or temperate zone Barnard’s stars are regions where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet.

The astronomical community often focuses on studying red dwarfs (like Barnard) because low-mass rocky planets are easier to detect in their environment, which is harder to do if we’re talking about larger stars like the Sun.

The new exoplanet Barnard b is twenty times closer to Barnard’s star than Mercury The sun “has a surface temperature of about 125°C and an orbital period of 3.15 Earth days,” Suarez Mascareno details.

“Barnard B. is one of the known exoplanets with lower mass and one of the few known with a mass less than that of Earth. But the planet is too close to its parent star,” adds Gonzalez Hernandez.

“Even if the star were about 2,500 degrees cooler than our Sun, it is too hot to support liquid water on the planet’s surface,” the lead author concludes.

Super-Earth that doesn’t exist

To conduct this study, the team used ESPRESSOa highly accurate instrument that measures the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of one or more planets orbiting it.

Astronomers are using this effect to measure with amazing precision how a star’s speed changes due to an exoplanet orbiting it.

Barnard b’s discovery was also confirmed by data from other instruments also specialized in searching for exoplanets: HARPin it La Silla Observatory THIS HARPS-N And CARMENS.

However, the new data did not confirm the existence of the super-Earth that was reported in 2018. “We have not been able to confirm its existence and, in fact, the general consensus at this point is that this exoplanet may not exist“, Suarez Mascareno told EFE.

“But we think Barnard’s star might up to three more exoplanets orbiting italthough at the moment we only have signs that we cannot confirm,” emphasizes the IAC researcher.

For this we will have to keep watching the star Barnard, “but the discovery of this planet, along with other earlier discoveries such as Next, shows that our cosmic yard is full of low-mass planets,” the researcher emphasizes.

ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction, will be equipped with this instrument. ANDES which will allow the scientific community to discover more of these small, rocky planets in the temperate zone around nearby stars and study the composition of their atmospheres.