Nearby Exoplanets |
Nearby Exoplanets |
Nov 15 2017, 04:17 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
There have been a few topics in recent years pertaining to exoplanets found circling nearby red dwarfs, particularly Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1. There's a new one to report, and I thought I'd give the topic a more general scope rather than specific to this one.
The star in question is Ross 128, and the planet's solar flux is between that of Earth and Venus. There's a good chance that this is potentially the most "habitable" exoplanet yet found, and is happily quite close (13th closest system), so that telescopes will be able to separate the light of the planet from that of the star. This is a circumstance that only a few nearby stars will permit in the foreseeable future, so Ross 128 is likely to figure large in our exoplanet studies over the next century. https://www.eso.org/public/archives/release...36/eso1736a.pdf |
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Nov 15 2018, 04:38 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
An article in Nature announces the discovery of a cold super-earth orbiting Barnard's Star.
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-astronomers-s...rnard-star.html I wonder if some super-earths might have warm surfaces due to greenhouse effect from a thick atmosphere, but I will leave that up to the experts. This would mean that both of the closest red dwarfs and at least three of the closest four have planets orbiting them. The evidence is shaping up that nearly all red dwarfs have planetary systems, although the 5th and 6th closest, Luyten 726-8, are a binary pair that come within 2.1 AU of one another, which might make that system in particular an unusual case. This also makes five planetary systems within 11.1 light years. There could also be more with smaller planets, more distant planets, and/or an orbital inclination that hides planets from the radial velocity method. Intrigue grows for the eventual observations from JWST (2021) and ELT (2024). |
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