4 Rocky Exoplanets found around Barnards Star, one of the next neighbors in the sun

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Scientists have confirmed the existence of four small, rocky planets, the Barnard’s star – the second closest star system for the earth – circle, a specialized instrument about the mighty Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. Only six years of light from us are all worlds too hot to support life as we know it.

This find is particularly exciting, explained Ritvik Basant, Ph.D. Student at the University of Chicago and Author on a newspaper about the new discovery. This is because Barnards Star is essentially our cosmic neighbor, but we don’t know much about it.

There were many claims of Exoplanet Corded Barnards Star over the years, out of the way back to the 1960s. Barnard’s star is one Red dwarfAlso referred to as a M-dwarf is striking for having the fastest right movement in relation to its movement in the night sky, of having a star discovered so far.

Last astronomers in 2024 claimed the espresso -electrical engineer on the very large telescope in Chile Detection of a planetAnd evidence for another three. Now a Jacob Bean and Basant team at the University of Chicago has undoubtedly confirmed the existence of all four planets.

“The proximity of Barnard’s star enabled us to observe them even in poor competitions, since its brightness made it accessible even under suboptimal conditions. This enabled us to collect further data, which ultimately led to the recognition of this very low mass planet,” Basant told Space.com.

An important tool used for the team’s observations was the Maroon-X spectrometer, a visiting instrument for Gemini North. Maroon-X measures the “radial speed”-the slight wiggles of Barnards star, while turning around the mass center, which is shared between herself and the four surrounding planets. They are all much less massive than Earth. In fact, they are among the least massive exoplanets that have ever been recognized.

The innermost planet in the system is Planet D (the planets are named in the order of discovery, not distance from the star), which has only 26% that of the earth and Umkalbits Barnards Star every 2.34 days at a distance of 2.8 million kilometers/0.0188 1.7 million miles astronomical units). Next is Planet B: The Planet, which was first identified in the espresso data in 2024. This planet has a mass of 30% of the earth and circles its star every 3.15 days at a distance of 2.13 million miles (3.4 million kilometers/0.0229 AU).

Planet C is the heavyweight of the heap with a mass of 33.5% of that of the earth. It buys Barnards Stern at a distance of 2.55 million miles (4.1 million kilometers/0.0274 AU) and has an orbit time of 4.12 days.

The first three planets were confirmed using the Maroon X observation. In order to confirm the fourth planet, E, the Maroon-X data had to be combined with espressos measurements in order to reveal a planet with only 19% of the height and to circle the star of Barnard every 6.74 days at a distance of 5.56 million miles (5.7 million kilometers/0.0381 AU).

These worlds are incredibly compact in terms of distance to each other, with only 372,820 miles (600,000 kilometers) between planets D and B and 434,960 miles (700,000 kilometers) between B and c. For comparison the average distance between earth and ours moon is only 238,600 miles (384,000 kilometers). Imagine you have a planet on our doorstep in just twice as high as in this distance!

So the things about Barnards Star are arranged.

For an even strict contrast, the Nasas Parker Solar probeWhat actually immerses in the solar corona is up to 6.2 million kilometers on the surface of our Sun. The orbits of all four planets around Barnards Star could easily fit into the Parker’s solar probe. And to promote the contrast between ours Solar system And the planetary system of Barnards Star, the closest planet of the sun in our solar system, mercuryhas an average distance of 58 million kilometers between itself and the sun.

The small separations between the planets around Barnard’s star are also reminiscent of a red dwarf. Trappist-1Seven planets are packed within 9.267 million kilometers of their central star.

However, a red dwarf like Barnard’s star differs a lot from our sun. It has only 16% of the mass of our sun and 19% of its diameter. Therefore, his planetary system is scaled. Red dwarfs can also be very fleeting, spitting clouds made of invited particles and radiation torches more often than our sun, which could remove near their atmospheres nearby. However, red dwarf activity decreases with age and Barnard’s star system is about 10 billion years old.

Nevertheless, none of the planets found so far, as we know it anyway, would be habitable because they are too close and too hot. Instead the habitable zone With the orbits between 10 and 42 days, Barnard’s star fell together with the round of the world. So far, no planets have been found that are far from the star.

“With the current data record, we can confidently exclude all planets that are more than 40 to 60% of the earth mass near the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone,” said Sbasant.

Maroon-X was able to collect 112 radial speed measurements from Barnards Stern during the 2021–2023 period. In the meantime, Espresso has recorded 149 radial speed measurements of the fleet foot star. This is not enough to completely rule out the possibility of more small planets that may lurk in the habitable zone.

“We also have additional data from 2024 that were not used in this discovery,” said Basant. “If I had to choose a number, I would estimate that 50 other data points are ideal to achieve the best possible sensitivity with current instruments.”

Maroon-X was specially developed to measure the radial speeds of red dwarf systems. The focus on red dwarfs is twice. One reason is that you are the most populous star in the galaxy And make the majority of the closest stars for us. Second, their small masses make it easier to recognize their movements, which are caused by rocky planets in size. On an eight-meter-class telescope like Gemini North and able to look into the near infrared, where red dwarfs like Barnards Stern are brighter, maroon-X is perfectly placed to look for these reduced planetary systems.

“This discovery was possible due to a combination of factors,” said Basant. “If I had to choose one, it would be the unprecedented precision of next generation instruments such as Maroon-X and espresso.”

Unfortunately, from our point of view, the four planets of Barnard’s star do not transport in front of their star. This means that we cannot observe secondary solar eclipses (where the planets move behind their star so that we can pull off the light of the star from the combined light of the star and the planet, only the light of the planets) or transit spectroscopy (in which star light is filtered by planetary atmosphere).

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“However, this planet does not convey this planet, your thermal emission can be examined [the James Webb Space Telescope]Although this remains a challenge, “says Basant.

In the meantime, Basant, Bean and her team, intended to continue looking for more planets that circle the Barnards Star. After all, we are practically neighbors – and it is time that we found and get to know this planetary system next door.

The results were published on March 11th in The astrophysical journal letters.