Artist’s impression of Barnard’s Star B, a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star
IT/M. Harbinger of Korn
One of the Sun’s closest neighbors, Barnard’s Star, appears to have at least one planet orbiting it, as well as three other possible planets that require further confirmation.
Astronomers are searching for planets around Barnard’s Star, which, at 5.96 light years away, is the closest star to us after the Sun’s three stars. Alpha Centaur Systemsince the 1960s.
In 2018, researchers claimed having found a planet that was at least three times larger than Earth, which they called Barnard’s b star, but later analysis showed that the signals from the apparent planet were actually caused by higher stellar activity than foreseen.
NOW, Jonay González Hernández from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and colleagues claim to have discovered a new Barnard b star, which is about 40% more massive than Earth.
The planet is much closer to its star than any planet in our solar system, completing one orbit in just over three Earth days. This also means that its surface is too hot for liquid water or life, with a temperature of around 125°C (257°F).
González Hernández and his team found the star by monitoring tiny wobbles in the position of Barnard’s Star caused by the gravity of its orbiting planet, using an instrument on the Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Southern European in Chile called ESPRESSO.
They also found evidence of three other planets orbiting the star. However, the signals weren’t strong enough to say for sure, so they will need additional observations to confirm.
“These are very delicate detections, and it is always difficult because there is the activity of the star, the stellar magnetic fields, which rotate with the star,” explains Rodrigo Fernando Diaz at the National University of San Martín in Argentina. González Hernández and his team carefully verified that their observations came from a planet, but there may still be “unknown unknowns,” says Fernando Díaz. To actually confirm this will require data from another telescope, which could take years of observations, he says.
