Astronomers Wowed! Three 'Super-Earths' in Nearby Star's Habitable Zone
New observations of a star known as Gliese 667C have revealed a system with at least six planets, including a record-breaking three super-Earths orbiting in the star’s “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist on the planets. This is the first planetary system found to have a fully packed habitable zone.
Credit: René Heller, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany.
The same team announced last year they had already found one planet in the habitable zone of this star system. They suspected the presence of more planets but couldn’t confirm them given the data set available then. This new result confirms the presence of two previously known planets orbiting this star, but also reveals five more. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds both Vogt and Butler’s research.
“Finding multiple Super-earths orbiting in the habitable zone of such a nearby star is quite significant,” Vogt said. “It really confirms our suspicion that our galaxy is teeming with potentially habitable rocky planets. Many of these, such as the ones around GJ 667C, are even near enough to imagine sending robotic interstellar probes out to study within a few human lifetimes.”
Also funded by NSF, coauthor Rory Barnes at the University of Washington noted the discovery offers additional insights. “The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star. Instead of looking at 10 stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and have a high chance of finding several of them,” he said
Gliese 667C is a well-studied star. Just over one-third the mass of the Sun, it is part of a triple-star system known as Gliese 667 (also referred to as GJ 667), 22 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion). This is relatively close to Earth, within the Sun’s galactic neighborhood, and much closer than the star systems investigated using telescopes such as the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
“This discovery is really the start of a whole new era studying Earth-like planets that may have liquid water on the surface,” said Maria Womack, NSF program officer. “This is a result of more than a decade of hard work using the best tools to do cutting-edge science–just the kind of research NSF loves to be part of.”
The team of astronomers–led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé of the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire, U.K.–combined new observations from Keck and other telescopes with extensive data collected previously by the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher at the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-meter telescope in Chile. The findings will be published this week in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
New observations of a star known as Gliese 667C have revealed a system with at least six planets, including a record-breaking three super-Earths orbiting in the star’s “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist on the planets. This is the first planetary system found to have a fully packed habitable zone. Here is an animated graphic representation of the radial velocity data that helped to identify these new planets.
“This discovery is really the start of a whole new era studying Earth-like planets which may have liquid water on the surface,” said Maria Womack, NSF program officer. “This is a result of more than a decade of hard work using the best tools to do cutting-edge science–just the kind of research NSF loves to be a part of.”
Credit: Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Universität Göttingen, and René Heller, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam
Ivy Kupec, NSF
Vince Stricherz, University of Washington
Tim Stephens, University of California, Santa Cruz
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pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!
AWESOME!
So the fact that a solar system can have multiple planets in this zone….whole bunch of guestimating here…
Which could, or possible, or might….all speculation.
Don’t we have a few space faring vehicles already left or leaving our current solar system?
Why are these not being utilized? You can’t tell me they do not send data back…so looking at dots moving is better then actually being around an area to explore?
I just don’t understand the way space experts subjugate ideas, claimed theories… If we can send a robot to mars and orbiters, then why would we not send a telescope to orbit mars…..would that not give better photos?
If our drone tech is so superb, then why not drone the solar system…there is plenty of research into alternate propulsion….that is functional….
I just see a waste of resources on so much….keep it simple stupid, should be the moto for exploration.