This artist's impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard's star.ESO / M. Kornmesser
Posted on 11/03/2024 7:16:11 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Astronomers have finally found a planet around the closest single star to the Sun — and there are probably more worlds in this system. The find settles years of controversy.
Some stars seem like perfect targets for exoplanet hunters. Barnard's star is certainly one of them: At only six light-years from the Sun in the direction of Ophiuchus, it is the nearest single star and the second-nearest star system after Alpha Centauri. It's so close that you can detect its movement across the sky in photographs taken just a few years apart.
Claims of planetary companions to Barnard's star have been made since the 1960s, but they've been disputed. Now, astronomers have finally found firm evidence of a planet in this system: Jonay González Hernández (Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries, Spain) led a team that published in Astronomy & Astrophysics the discovery of a world smaller than Earth circling Barnard's star in a little more than 3 days. It has at least half the mass of Venus, but probably less than Earth's mass...
It's not the first time that astronomers have claimed to discover a planet in the Barnard star system. The first "eureka" moment dates back to 1963, well before exoplanets were a thing. Peter van de Kamp (Swarthmore College) credited the wobble of the star's position on the sky to two planets' tugs. But later work showed those wobbles were due to improper telescope adjustments, not planets. Similar claims of planets around other nearby stars, including 61 Cygni and Lalande 21185 — all eagerly picked up by the media — were also later disproven. The positional measurements simply weren't precise enough at that time to detect planets.
(Excerpt) Read more at skyandtelescope.org ...
This artist's impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard's star.ESO / M. Kornmesser
"Barnard’s star has the largest proper motion of any known star—10.39 seconds of arc annually."
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·
· post new topic · subscribe ·Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·
Toldja!
Hey there lonely boy,
My only boy.
You'll have to keep a close eye on it to see it move.
Oh, beans!
Great find. But it’s doubtful that intelligent life could exist there.
“The planet, dubbed “Barnard b,” orbits its star at only 0.02 astronomical unit, 20 times closer than Mercury orbits the Sun.
This distance puts it well inside the star’s habitable zone: With a surface temperature of an estimated 400K (260°F), there is certainly no liquid water on its surface, even though the star itself is 2,500 K cooler than our Sun.”
Yikes that sounds hot.
But Voyager is not quite a light day from earth as far as I know. So we can get there in 50 x 365 x 6 = 109,500 years.
Very.
Barnard’s star is a small red dwarf star and the discovered planet is half the size of Venus orbiting 1.8 million miles from Barnard’s star. That means the planet with a surface temperature of 260 deg F and is tidally locked (one side always faces its sun).
It’s a suitable place for Demonicrats, but it’s otherwise uninhabitable.
There is a planet B after all.
"Keep a close eye" only in the figurative sense: Bernar's Star has an apparent visual magnitude of +9.5. It would thus have to be about 25 times brighter to be just barely visible to the unaided eye.
Regards,
Barnard’s Star has the largest proper motion observed yet.
Barnard’s star issued a press release saying that it’s not his planet and demanding a DNA test (or other chemical test). “I’m not paying planet support for 18 years, dammit!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
