Witness the groundbreaking discovery of an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, our sun’s nearest neighbor, captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT). This newfound exoplanet boasts a mass comparable to half that of Venus and completes an orbit in just over three Earth days.
The team behind this remarkable find also hints at potential additional exoplanets encircling Barnard’s star in varying orbits. Situated merely six light-years away from us, Barnard’s star stands as one of the closest stellar systems known.
This latest revelation marks a significant milestone in astronomical research after years of meticulous observations conducted with ESO’s VLT based at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The lead author Jonay González Hernández expresses unwavering confidence throughout their pursuit for celestial discoveries.
Barnard b, as christened by researchers, orbits its host star at a distance twenty times closer than Mercury does to our sun and endures scorching surface temperatures around 125 °C due to its proximity.
Despite being one of the lightest known exoplanets and smaller than Earth itself, Barnard b resides too close to its parent star for habitable conditions—rendering liquid water unsustainable on its surface due to extreme heat levels.
2024-10-01 07:15:03
Source from phys.org