An exoplanet in the closest single star to us

in Popular STEM2 months ago

An exoplanet in the closest single star to us



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On October 1, the Southern European Observatory issued a statement reporting that using the Very Large Telescope of the Southern European Observatory located in northern Chile, a team of astronomers had discovered an exoplanet orbiting the Barnard Star, this star is very interesting because it is the closest individual star to our sun, it is a star that is in the direction of the constellation of ophiuchus.


Barnard Star is located a little more than almost 6 years away, to be exact 5.9 light years from us, there are only three other stars closer and they are the ones that make up Alpha Centauri, including Proxima Centauri, Proxima Centauri is a red lullaby. We know that it has at least one planet, maybe it has more, but at the moment we know that it has one and the other two are interesting stars because they are more similar to the sun, one is a yellow lullaby and the other is an orange lullaby.


If there were a planet it could be very interesting, but it is complicated, because they are quite close to each other so it is difficult for a planet to be orbiting them, but there are some possibilities that are looking for that option.




This newly discovered exoplanet has at least half the mass of Venus so it is small, a year on it lasts just over three Earth days and it has half the mass of Venus.


The team's observations also point to the existence of three other candidates for its planets and this is more interesting because the one that has now been discovered that takes 3 Earth days to orbit the star means that it is very close to it, in fact, The temperature on this planet is about 129 degrees Celsius, it is too hot, but the other three could be in the “Goldilocks” zone, which is what the habitable zone is called around a star, so they could be planets. habitable or potentially habitable.


Jonay González Hernández is a researcher at the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute in Spain and is the main author of the article, so it is a Spanish discovery. In addition, this team is looking for signs of other planets that are possibly in the habitable zone of the Barnard star and of course, being so close to Earth at almost 6 light years, this finding means that we would have an option to observe these in detail. worlds and be able to analyze them even the atmospheric composition if they have atmospheres, this one may not have it because it is quite small and is too close to the star so it will receive the coronal mass ejections, the stellar wind and that is quite annoying for be able to maintain one atmosphere but the others may be more interesting.




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