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last mo.

Astronomers Confirm Four Rocky Planets Orbiting Barnard's Star

The discovery, enabled by advanced instruments, resolves decades of uncertainty about the star's planetary system.

For a century, astronomers have been studying Barnard’s Star in the hope of finding planets around it. First discovered by E. E. Barnard at Yerkes Observatory in 1916, it is the nearest single star system to Earth. Now, using in part the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have discovered four sub-Earth exoplanets orbiting the star. One of the planets is the least massive exoplanet ever discovered using the radial velocity technique, indicating a new benchmark for discovering smaller planets around nearby stars.
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Overview

  • Four small, rocky exoplanets have been confirmed orbiting Barnard's Star, located just under six light-years from Earth.
  • The planets, among the smallest ever detected, range from 20% to 30% of Earth's mass and were identified using the MAROON-X and ESPRESSO instruments.
  • All four planets orbit very close to their host star, completing their orbits in 2 to 7 Earth days, making them too hot to support life.
  • This marks a breakthrough in the precision of radial velocity instruments, which measure stellar wobbles caused by orbiting planets.
  • The confirmation resolves a long-standing search for planets around Barnard's Star, a red dwarf long suspected of hosting planetary companions.