Exoplanet found around our closest lone star
An exoplanet has been discovered orbiting the nearest single star to Earth (apart from the Sun), only 6 light-years away. The nearest stars to our solar system are in the Alpha Centauri system at just 4.2 light-years away. This triple star system is in the Centaurus constellation. The closest exoplanets to Earth were discovered orbiting one of the Alpha Centauri stars, Proxima Centauri, in 2016. But the new exoplanet has been found orbiting Barnard’s star – the nearest lone star to our solar system. Barnard’s star has long been thought to be a prime candidate for the detection of Earth-like exoplanets. A false alarm in 2018 might have dashed hopes. But astronomers are a patient bunch. “Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, lead author of the Astronomy & Astrophysics paper announcing the planet’s discovery. The planet, Barnard b, is about ...
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