red dwarf Archives - Many Worlds

How to Predict the Make-Up of Rocky Exoplanets Too Small and Distant to Directly Observe

The seven planets of the Trappist-1 solar system. The first planets were discovered five years ago and others in 2017. Trappist-1 is a dream system for researchers to study because it includes so many rocky planets. The planets do, however, orbit very close to a relatively small and cool Red Dwarf star, which makes the system and its potential for habitability different than if they orbited a sun-like star. (NASA)

In trying to tease out what a planet is made of, its density is of great importance. Scientists can use that measure of density — the amount of matter contained in a given volume — to determine what ratio of a planet is likely is gas, or water, or rocks, or rocks and iron and more. They can even help determine if the planet has a central core.

So determining the density of exoplanets is a high priority and one that has been especially important for the Trappist-1 solar system, the amazing collection of seven “Earth-sized” rocky planets orbiting a Red Dwarf star some 40 light years away.

The Trappist-1 planets have been a major focus of study since its first planets were discovered in 2016, and now a new and rather surprising finding about the density of the planets has been accepted for publication in the Planetary Science Journal . While the planets are somewhat different sizes, they appear to be all almost the exact same density. This provides a goldmine of information for scientists.

Equally exciting, while the seven Trappist-1 planets have similar densities, they are 8% less dense than they would be if they had the same chemical composition as our planet. It may not seem like a lot, but to astrophysicists it is.

“This is the information we needed to make hypotheses about their composition and understand how these planets differ from the rocky planets in our solar system,” said lead author Eric Agol of the University of Washington.

What Agol considers the team’s most robust conclusions: The Trappist-1 planets have a “common make-up” just as the rocky planets in our solar system do, but are nonetheless in some significant ways different from our rocky planets. “TRAPPIST-1 has a different ‘recipe’ for forming terrestrial planets, and a more uniform recipe as well,” he told me.

A planet’s density is determined not just by its composition, but also by its size: Gravity compresses the material a planet is made of, increasing the planet’s density.

The Planets Too Big for Their Star

September 26, 2019 / Elizabeth Tasker / 0 Comments

Artist rendering of a red dwarf , with three exoplanets orbiting. About 75% of all stars in the sky are the cooler, smaller red dwarfs. (NASA)

Two giant planets have been found orbiting a tiny star, defying our theories for how planets are formed.

To be entirely truthful, there is nothing new in an exoplanet discovery shredding our current ideas about how planets are built. The first extrasolar planets ever discovered orbit a dead star known as a pulsar. Pulsars end their regular starry life in a colossal supernova explosion that should incinerate or eject any orbiting worlds. This discovery was followed a few years later by the first detection of a hot Jupiter; a gas giant planet orbiting its star in just a few days, defying theories that said such planets should form on long orbits where there is more building material to make massive worlds. Exoplanet hunting is a field full of surprises and now, it has one more.

GJ 3512 is a red dwarf star with a luminosity only around a thousandth (0.0016L_☉) of our sun. The small size of these stars makes it easier to detect the presence of a planet, and many of our most famous exoplanet discoveries have been found orbiting red dwarf stars, including Proxima Centauri b and the seven worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 system. But a notable attribute of these systems is that the planets are small. Unlike our own sun which boasts four gas giant worlds, planets around red dwarfs are typically smaller than Neptune.

Artist impression of the seven planets of Trappist-1 that also orbit a red dwarf star. These are small worlds. Jupiter-sized gas giants were not previously thought to form around the small red dwarf stars (NASA/JPL-Caltech).

This preference for downsized worlds is assumed to be due to the protoplanetary disk; the disk of dust and gas that swirls around young stars out of which planets are born. Protoplanetary disks around small stars tend to be low mass and puffy. This limits and spreads out the solid material, making it difficult for a young planet to grow.

Yet the two planets discovered around GJ 3512 are not small.
Led by Juan Carlos Morales at the IEEC Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, the announcement of the discovery was published in the journal Science today.

The team detected these two new worlds using the radial velocity technique which measures the wobble in the position of the star due to the gravitational tug of the orbiting planet.… Read more

Does Proxima Centauri Create an Environment Too Horrifying for Life?

November 29, 2018 / Elizabeth Tasker / 1 Comment

Artist’s impression of the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

In 2016, the La Silla Observatory in Chile spotted evidence of possibly the most eagerly anticipated exoplanet in the Galaxy. It was a world orbiting the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, making this our closest possible exoplanet neighbour. Moreover, the planet might even be rocky and temperate.

Proxima Centauri b had been discovered by discerning a periodic wobble in the motion of the star. This revealed a planet with a minimum mass 30% larger than the Earth and an orbital period of 11.2 days. Around our sun, this would be a baking hot world.

But Proxima Centauri is a dim red dwarf star and bathes its closely orbiting planet in a level of radiation similar to that received by the Earth. If the true mass of the planet was close to the measured minimum mass, this meant Proxima Centauri b would likely be a rocky world orbiting within the habitable zone.

Comparison of the orbit of Proxima Centauri b with the same region of the solar system. Proxima Centauri is smaller and cooler than the sun and the planet orbits much closer to its star than Mercury. As a result it lies well within the habitable zone. (ESO/M. Kornmesser/G. Coleman.)

Sitting 4.2 light years from our sun, a journey to Proxima Centauri b is still prohibitively long.

But as our nearest neighbor, the exoplanet is a prime target for the upcoming generation of telescopes that will attempt to directly image small worlds. Its existence was also inspiration for privately funded projects to develop faster space travel for interstellar distances.

Yet observations taken around the same time as the La Silla Observatory discovery were painting a very different picture of Proxima Centauri. It was a star with issues.

This set of observations were taken with Evryscope; an array of small telescopes that was watching stars in the southern hemisphere. What Evryscope spotted was a flare from Proxima Centauri that was so bright that the dim red dwarf star became briefly visible to the naked eye.

Flares are the sudden brightening in the atmosphere of a star that release a strong burst of energy. They are often accompanied by a large expulsion of plasma from the star known as a “coronal mass ejection”. Flares from the sun are typically between 10²⁷ – 10³² erg of energy, released in a few tens of minutes.… Read more

Red Dwarf Stars and the Planets Around Them

October 26, 2017 / Marc Kaufman / 0 Comments

Artist rendering of a red dwarf or M star, with three exoplanets orbiting. About 75 percent of all stars in the sky are the cooler, smaller red dwarfs. (NASA)

It’s tempting to look for habitable planets around red dwarf stars, which put out far less luminosity and so are less blinding. But is it wise?

That question has been near the top of the list for many exoplanet scientists, especially those involved in the search for habitable worlds.

Red dwarfs are plentiful (about three-quarters of all the stars out there) and the planets orbiting them are easier to observe because the stars are so small compared to our Sun and so an Earth-sized planet blocks a greater fraction of starlight. Because planets orbiting red dwarfs are much closer in to their host stars, the observing geometry favors detecting more transits.

A potentially rich target, but with some drawbacks that have become better understood in recent years. Not only are most planets orbiting these red dwarf stars tidally locked, with one side always facing the sun and the other in darkness, but the life history of red dwarfs is problematic. They start out with powerful flares that many scientists say would sterilize the close-in planets forever.

Also, they are theorized to be prone to losing whatever water remains even if the stellar flares don’t do it. Originally, it was thought that this would happen because of a “runaway greenhouse,” where a warming planet under a brightening star would evaporate enough water from its oceans to create a thick blanket of H2O vapor at high altitudes and block the escape of radiation, leading to further warming and the eventual loss of all the planet’s water.

The parching CO₂ greenhouse of a planet like Venus may be the result of that. Later it was realized that on many planets, another mechanism called the “moist greenhouse” might create a similar thick blanket of water vapor at high altitudes long before a planet ever got to the runaway greenhouse stage.

Finally now has come some better news about red dwarf exoplanets. Using 3-D models that characterize atmospheres going back, forward and to the sides, researchers found atmospheric conditions quite different from those predicted by 1-D models that capture changes only going from the surface straight up.

One paper found that using some pretty simple observations and calculations, scientists could determine the bottom line likelihood of whether or not the planet would be undone by a moist greenhouse effect. … Read more

Found: Our Nearest Exoplanet Neighbor

August 24, 2016 / Marc Kaufman / 0 Comments

This artist ’ s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting t he red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The double star A lpha Centauri AB also appears in the image to the upper-right of Proxima itself. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, wh ere the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

An artist impression of the surface of the candidate planet Proxima b orbiting the red
dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface.
(ESO/M. Kornmesser)

No exoplanet can possibly be closer to us than the one just detected around our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri.

The long-sought and long-imagined planet is larger than Earth, but small enough to be rocky as opposed to a gas or ice giant. Making things even more exciting, the planet was detected inside the habitable zone of Proxima, suggesting that the planet could potentially have temperatures that allow for pooling liquid water.

Innumerable questions remain to be answered before we know if it actually is habitable (as opposed to residing in a habitable zone), and far more before we know if it might actually be inhabited.

But the very exciting news is that an exoplanet has almost definitively been found only 4 light-years from our solar system. There’s every reason to believe it will become the focus of intense and sustained scientific scrutiny.

The detection is the culmination of a “Pale Red Dot” observing campaign that began in earnest early this year to search the regions close to Proxima for exoplanets. Guillem Anglada-Escudé of Queen Mary University, London, was a leader that campaign, as well as earlier efforts to dig deeper into decade-old Proxima Centauri data from other teams that hinted at a planet but were far from definitive.

“The signal that a planet orbits Proxima every 11 days is strong, so we have little doubt that it’s there,” AngladaEscude´ said. “And because this is the closest possible planet outside our solar system, there’s a sense of finding something special, even inspirational.”

His hope is that the detection will become a global “driver,” a discovery that is significant enough to change how people think about our world, as well as about the possibility that some day humans will explore up close a planet outside our system.

Said Anglada-Escude´: “The search for life on Proxima b comes next….”

Caption: This picture combines a view of the southern skies over the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile with images of the stars Proxima Centauri (lowe r-right) and the double star Alpha Centauri AB (lower-left) from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Solar System and is orbited by the planet Proxima b, which was discovered using the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope. Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO/ESA/NASA/M. Zamani

This picture combines a view of the southern skies over the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile with images of the stars Proxima Centauri (lower right) and the double star Alpha Centauri AB (lower-left) from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The Pale Red Dot Campaign

February 1, 2016 / Marc Kaufman / 0 Comments

Alpha and Beta Centauri are the bright stars; Proxima Centauri is the small, faint one circles in red.

Alpha Centauri A and B are the bright stars; Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star, is the small, faint one circled in red. (NASA, Julia Figliotti)

Astronomers have been trying for decades to find a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our sun and so a natural and tempting target. Claims of an exoplanet discovery have been made before, but so far none have held up.

Now, in a novel and very public way, a group of European astronomers have initiated a focused effort to change all that with their Pale Red Dot Campaign. Based at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and supported by networks of smaller telescopes around the world, they will over the next three months observe Proxima and its environs and then will spend many more months analayzing all that they find.

And in an effort to raise both knowledge and excitement, the team will tell the world what they’re doing and finding over Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social and traditional media of all kind.

“We have reason to be hopeful about finding a planet, but we really don’t know what will happen,” said Guillem Anglada-Escudé of Queen Mary University, London, one of the campaign organizers. “People will have an opportunity to learn how astronomers do their work finding exoplanets, and they’ll be able to follow our progress. If we succeed, that would be wonderful and important. And if no planet is detected, that’s very important too.”

The Pale Blue Dot, as photographed by Voyager 1 (NASA)

The name of the campaign is, of course, a reference to the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990, when it was well beyond Pluto. The image came to symbolize our tiny but precious place in the galaxy and universe.

But rather than potentially finding a pale blue dot, any planet orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri would reflect the reddish light of the the star, which lies some 4.2 light years away from our solar system. Proxima — as well as 20 of the 30 stars in our closest neighborhood — is reddish because it is considerably smaller and less luminous than a star like our sun.

Anglada-Escudé said he is cautiously optimistic about finding a planet because of earlier Proxima observations that he and colleagues made at the same observatory. That data, he said, suggested the presence of a planet 1.2 to 1.5 times the size of Earth, within the habitable zone of the star.… Read more

Many Worlds

Tag: red dwarf