ESO: Evidence found for super-earth orbiting Barnard’s Star

Here is the latest ESO (European Southern Observatory) report:

Super-Earth Orbiting Barnard’s Star
Red Dots campaign uncovers compelling evidence
of exoplanet around closest single star to Sun

The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky. This image shows an artist’s impression of the planet’s surface. [Higher-res images]

The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. One of the largest observing campaigns to date using data from a world-wide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth. Barnard’s star is the fastest moving star in the night sky.

A planet has been detected orbiting Barnard’s Star, a mere 6 light-years away. This breakthrough — announced in a paper published today in the journal Nature — is a result of the Red Dots and CARMENES projects, whose search for local rocky planets has already uncovered a new world orbiting our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri.

The planet, designated Barnard’s Star b, now steps in as the second-closest known exoplanet to Earth [1]. The gathered data indicate that the planet could be a super-Earth, having a mass at least 3.2 times that of the Earth, which orbits its host star in roughly 233 days. Barnard’s Star, the planet’s host star, is a red dwarf, a cool, low-mass star, which only dimly illuminates this newly-discovered world. Light from Barnard’s Star provides its planet with only 2% of the energy the Earth receives from the Sun.

Despite being relatively close to its parent star — at a distance only 0.4 times that between Earth and the Sun — the exoplanet lies close to the snow line, the region where volatile compounds such as water can condense into solid ice. This freezing, shadowy world could have a temperature of –170 ℃, making it inhospitable for life as we know it.

Named for astronomer E. E. Barnard, Barnard’s Star is the closest single star to the Sun. While the star itself is ancient — probably twice the age of our Sun — and relatively inactive, it also has the fastest apparent motion of any star in the night sky [2]. Super-Earths are the most common type of planet to form around low-mass stars such as Barnard’s Star, lending credibility to this newly discovered planetary candidate. Furthermore, current theories of planetary formation predict that the snow line is the ideal location for such planets to form.

Previous searches for a planet around Barnard’s Star have had disappointing results — this recent breakthrough was possible only by combining measurements from several high-precision instruments mounted on telescopes all over the world [3].

“After a very careful analysis, we are 99% confident that the planet is there,” stated the team’s lead scientist, Ignasi Ribas (Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia and the Institute of Space Sciences, CSIC in Spain). “However, we’ll continue to observe this fast-moving star to exclude possible, but improbable, natural variations of the stellar brightness which could masquerade as a planet.”

Among the instruments used were ESO’s famous planet-hunting HARPS and UVES spectrographs.

“HARPS played a vital part in this project. We combined archival data from other teams with new, overlapping, measurements of Barnard’s star from different facilities,”

commented Guillem Anglada Escudé (Queen Mary University of London), co-lead scientist of the team behind this result [4].

“The combination of instruments was key to allowing us to cross-check our result.”

The astronomers used the Doppler effect to find the exoplanet candidate. While the planet orbits the star, its gravitational pull causes the star to wobble. When the star moves away from the Earth, its spectrum redshifts; that is, it moves towards longer wavelengths. Similarly, starlight is shifted towards shorter, bluer, wavelengths when the star moves towards Earth.

Astronomers take advantage of this effect to measure the changes in a star’s velocity due to an orbiting exoplanet — with astounding accuracy. HARPS can detect changes in the star’s velocity as small as 3.5 km/h — about walking pace. This approach to exoplanet hunting is known as the radial velocity method, and has never before been used to detect a similar super-Earth type exoplanet in such a large orbit around its star.

“We used observations from seven different instruments, spanning 20 years of measurements, making this one of the largest and most extensive datasets ever used for precise radial velocity studies.” explained Ribas. ”The combination of all data led to a total of 771 measurements — a huge amount of information!”

“We have all worked very hard on this breakthrough,” concluded Anglada-Escudé. “This discovery is the result of a large collaboration organised in the context of the Red Dots project, that included contributions from teams all over the world. Follow-up observations are already underway at different observatories worldwide.”

This wide-field image shows the surroundings of the red dwarf known as Barnard’s Star in the constellation of Ophiuchus (the Serpent-Bearer). This picture was created from material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The centre of the image shows Barnard’s Star captured in three different exposures. The star is the fastest moving star in the night sky and its large apparent motion can be seen as its position changes between successive observations — shown in red, yellow and blue. [Higher-res images]
Notes
[1] The only stars closer to the Sun make up the triple star system Alpha Centauri. In 2016, astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth in this system, Proxima Centauri. That planet lies just over 4 light-years from Earth, and was discovered by a team led by Guillem Anglada Escudé.

[2] The total velocity of Barnard’s Star with respect to the Sun is about 500 000 km/h. Despite this blistering pace, it is not the fastest known star. What makes the star’s motion noteworthy is how fast it appears to move across the night sky as seen from the Earth, known as its apparent motion. Barnard’s Star travels a distance equivalent to the Moon’s diameter across the sky every 180 years — while this may not seem like much, it is by far the fastest apparent motion of any star.

[3] The facilities used in this research were: HARPS at the ESO 3.6-metre telescope; UVES at the ESO VLT; HARPS-N at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo; HIRES at the Keck 10-metre telescope; PFS at the Carnegie’s Magellan 6.5-m telescope; APF at the 2.4-m telescope at Lick Observatory; and CARMENES at the Calar Alto Observatory. Additionally, observations were made with the 90-cm telescope at the Sierra Nevada Observatory, the 40-cm robotic telescope at the SPACEOBS observatory, and the 80-cm Joan Oró Telescope of the Montsec Astronomical Observatory (OAdM).

[4] The story behind this discovery will be explored in more detail in this week’s ESOBlog.

Links

 

Mars: Insight landing on Nov.26, ESA ExoMars landing site selected, + Pits and Caves

NASA’s Insight lander is set to settled down on the Mars surface on November 26th. Emily Lakdawalla gives a preview of the event from : What to Expect When InSight Lands on Mars | The Planetary Society

InSight’s will be a throwback landing, simpler than Curiosity’s and identical to Phoenix’s. It will employ heat shield, parachute, and landing rockets, but no fancy entry guidance or Skycrane maneuver. Even if it’s simpler, it’s still terrifying, a period during which decades of work comes down to minutes of automated maneuvers that’ll transform a space-faring flying saucer into a sessile lander.

More at

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The European Space Agency recently announced the decision on where the ExoMars rover will land in 2021:

ExoMars is to land at Oxia Planum.

Bob Zimmerman explains the reasons for the site selection: The ExoMars 2020 landing site | Behind The Black

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Bob also discusses pits and lava tube caves on the Red Planet: More Pits on Mars! | Behind The Black

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Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

 

Student CubeSat projects roundup – Nov.12.2018

A sampling of recent stories about student CubeSat projects and programs:

** IRVINE01 CubeSat built by students in the Irvine CubeSat STEM Program (ICSP) in Irvine, California reached orbit on Rocket Lab Electron rocket launched over the weekend:

See also

** First Jordanian-made satellite to launch! | Roya News

Jordanian history will be made on November 19, 2018, as the first local made nano-satellite, dubbed “JY1-SAT”, will launch into space to take pictures of Jordan’s historical and touristic places.

The ‘Masar’ (Path) initiative, was launched by the Crown Prince’s Foundation, Prince Hussein Bin Abdullah II, in partnership with NASA who trained 22 Jordanian engineering students from around the Kingdom, in scientific and practical research at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, the United States.

The team of students explored satellite engineering and related knowledge, and developed their skills in aviation and space science through an intensive program over a period of 10 weeks, under the supervision of NASA experts. This partnership training aims to give Jordanian youth an opportunity to demonstrate capabilities and innovativeness in the field of space, and came to establish the CubeSat.

** AMSAT’s Fox-1Cliff CubeSat Set to Launch on November 19 – ARRL.org

AMSAT is counting down to the launch of the next Fox-1 satellite, Fox-1Cliff. According to Spaceflight Now, the launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base of Spaceflight’s SSO-A SmallSat Express mission, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle, is currently scheduled for November 19 at 1832 UTC.

Fox-1Cliff carries the Fox-1 U/v FM repeater, AMSAT’s L-Band Downshifter, the flight spare of the AO-85 Vanderbilt University Low Energy Proton (LEP) radiation experiment, and the standard Fox-1 Penn State University-Erie MEMS gyroscope experiment. Virginia Tech provided a video graphics array camera that’s similar to the one on AO-92 but which will provide images at a higher 640 × 480 resolution.

See also

**  More about the Kyrgyzstan women’s CubeSat project mentioned in previous CubeSat roundup:

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-313 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • Fox-1Cliff Launch Date Announced
  • Fox-1Cliff Launch Membership Drive
  • “Fox-In-A-Box” SD Cards Now Available
  • Can You Capture a Double Hop APRS Packet?
  • European MetOp-C Weather Satellite Launch
  • Collision Avoidance for SSO-A Mission
  • Identifying Newly Launched Objects
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • ARISS News & FundRazr
  • Correction: AMSAT Senior Leadership
  • Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat info:

The Space Show this week – Nov.12.2018

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, Nov. 12, 2018; 2-3:30 pm PST (4-5:30 pm CST, 5-6:30 pm EST): We welcome back Dr. Roger Launius regarding his new Smithsonian History book, Space Exploration From the Ancient World to the Extraterrestrial Future.

2. Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018: 7-8:30 pm PST; 9-10:30 pm CST; 10-11:30 pm EST: We welcome back Dr. Doug Plata for advocacy and lunar updates.

3. Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.

4. Friday, Nov. 16, 2018; 9:30 am -11 am PST, (12:30 -2 pm EST; 11:30 am -1 pm CDT. We welcome back Dr. Ken Davidian for NewSpace business and related research news and updates.

5. The Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018 program from 12-1:30 pm PST, (3-4:30 pm EST, 2-3:30 pm CST): No show today for family get together.

See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
David Livingston

A couple of recent programs:

Everyone can participate in space