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Astronomers have discovered a rocky, low-mass planet orbiting the closest single star to Earth.<\/p>
The exoplanet<\/a> \u2013 known as Barnard b \u2013 was found around the famous Barnard’s Star and is half the mass of Venus, with a year that lasts just over three Earth days.<\/p> The closest star system to Earth is Alpha Centauri<\/a>, a three-star group, but Barnard’s star is the closest single star to our Solar System, a cosmic stone’s throw at just six lightyears<\/a> away.<\/p> What’s more, observations hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates in orbit around the star.<\/p> And while the confirmed exoplanet is still much too far for any spacecraft to visit, the discovery marks a major step in the search for and study of nearby exoplanets.<\/p> A team of astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to find exoplanet Barnard b.<\/p> A potential detection had been made in 2018, but the exoplanet around Barnard’s star had not been confirmed until now.<\/p> The team used ESPRESSO, an instrument designed to measure the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of exoplanets in orbit.<\/p> Results were confirmed by data from other exoplanet instruments like HARPS at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, HARPS-N and CARMENES.<\/p> The data does not support the existence of the exoplanet reported in 2018.<\/p> The discovery was announced in a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and follows 5 years of observations made with the VLT, located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.<\/p>More on exoplanets<\/strong><\/h3>
How the Barnard’s star exoplanet was found<\/strong><\/h2>