After 5 years of research, an international team led by Jonay González Hernandez at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered a new exoplanet, Barnard b, orbiting around Barnard’s star, one of our closest celestial neighbors just six light years away from Earth.
Barnard b has many interesting characteristics:
- It is one of the lowest mass exoplanets that have been discovered to date. Barnard b has half the mass of Venus
- Orbits 20 times closer its star than Mercury does to our Sun.
- It completes an orbit in just 3.15 Earth days. So a year on this exoplanet is just over 3 days!
- It’s surface temperature is estimated to be around 125 degree Celsius, which is hot enough for water to stay as liquid on its surface.
- The exoplanet is located well inside the “habitable zone” of its host star.
“Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández the lead author of the study to BBC, Sky at Night Magazine.
Barnard’s star is the prime spot for astronomers who are working on exoplanet discovery. As a smaller star, it makes it easier to locate rocky planets compared to those around larger Sun-like stars.
Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, a co-author of the study said that they now need to continue observing this star to confirm other candidate signals.
The discovery of Barnard b along with the previous exoplanets, Proxima b, and Proxima suggests that low-mass planets may be more common in our neighborhood than previously believed.
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