European Satellite Detects Star Heading Towards Our Solar System (+Video)

Astronomers have predicted that a rouge star called Gliese 710 is coming straight towards our Solar System rapidly, and now they have also worked out exactly when it should reach our solar system. Gliese 710 is currently plunging through space at almost 32,000 mph (51,499 km/h).

Gliese 710 is a star in the constellation Serpens Cauda which is expected to pass through our Solar System’s Oort cloud 1.35 million years from now. Its distance at closest approach is expected to be about 13000 astronomical units, or a mere 77 light days (430 times the orbit of Neptune). For comparison, Proxima Centauri is more than 1500 light days away.

 ”This event will be the strongest disrupting encounter in the future and history of the solar system” according to astronomers Filip Berski and Piotr Dybczyński. 

Gliese 710 has the potential to perturb the hypothetical Oort cloud enough to send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System for millions of years, triggering about 10 visible comets per year and possibly causing an impact event.

Earlier dynamic models by García-Sánchez, et al. in 1999 indicated that the net increase in cratering rate due to the passage of Gliese 710 would be no more than 5%. 

They estimated that the closest approach would happen in 1,360,000 years when the star will approach within 0.337 ± 0.177 parsecs (1.100 ± 0.577 light years) of the Sun.

At that close distance, it would be similar in brightness to a bright planet, at an apparent visual magnitude of about -2.7 (brighter than Mars), with a total proper motion around one arcminute per year.

Earlier studies of its proper motion, distance, and radial velocity indicated that its closest approach would be closer to one light year, based on less precise Hipparcos data. The proper motion of Gliese 710 is currently very small for its distance, meaning it is travelling nearly directly in our line of sight.

In a time interval of ±10 million years from the present, Gliese 710 is the star whose combination of mass and close approach distance will cause the greatest gravitational perturbation of the Solar System.

As of 2017, no planets have been detected orbiting Gliese 710 and it remains unknown whether it offers mankind a possibility of interstellar hopping.

Gliese 710 currently is 63.8 light-years (19.6 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Serpens and has a magnitude of 9.69. It has a stellar classification of K7 Vk, which means it is a main sequence star that is generating energy through the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen at its core. (The suffix ‘k’ indicates that the spectrum shows absorption lines from interstellar matter.) The mass of this star is about 60% of the Sun’s mass and it has an estimated 67% of the Sun’s radius.[9] It is a suspected variable star that may vary in magnitude from 9.65–9.69.

Gliese 710
Read more here: http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710

The research paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
 - Gliese 710 will pass the Sun even closer -
- Close approach parameters recalculated based on the first Gaia data release -
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2016/11/aa29835-16/aa29835-16.html

ESA
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_s_billion-star_map_hints_at_treasures_to_come

Clips, images credit: ESA/Gaia, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, ESO, NASA