The search for habitable exoplanets is very exciting, although we have yet to find many such worlds that could be favorable for Earth-type life. But astronomers are not giving up, and worlds that could be at least theoretically habitable are constantly increasing. A large team of astronomers recently claimed the discovery of a very interesting and promising super-earth.
exoplanet GJ 251 c it orbits a spectral class M red dwarf that happens to be only 18 light-years away. That’s very close on an astronomical scale, almost as if we were talking about the planet down the street. It is a super-Earth that is about four times more massive than Earth and is very likely a terrestrial, Earth-like planet. The details of her discovery were recently published by a professional magazine Astronomical Journal.
A super-earth in the habitable zone
The discovery of the exoplanet GJ 251 c was made possible by 20 years of careful measurements of the changes in the star’s motion caused by the planets orbiting it. This method, known as radial velocity, tracks subtle changes in the color of the light a star emits as the planets’ gravity acts on it. Although the changes themselves are extremely small, advanced spectrographs and observatories such as Penn State’s Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF) and NEID spectrometer managed to filter out the noise caused by the activity of the star itself and detect the planet GJ 251 c.
Observations have shown that GJ 251 c is in the habitable zone of its dwarf star, which means that there should be liquid water on the surface of this exoplanetif it has the right atmosphere. There is also an exoplanet in the red dwarf system, GJ 251 b. According to astronomers, it is also a super-Earth, but it orbits too close to the star to be habitable.
„We have already found so many exoplanets that another such discovery does not look so dazzling at first glance“, he admits Paul Robertson from the University of California, Irvine. “But her proximity is very valuable on this one. 18 light years, that’s practically out the door.” Together with an orbit in the habitable zone, this makes this exoplanet a very interesting object for further research.
The search for the exoplanets of the GJ 251 system was not entirely easy. First, in 2019, a pair of exoplanets was detected near the star GJ 251. Soon after, their discovery was retracted, saying that the detection of exoplanets was actually just a manifestation of the star’s activity. After some time, however, the existence of the exoplanet GJ 251 b was confirmed, which then helped with the discovery of the exoplanet GJ 251 c.
Challenges and opportunities for future technologies
To date, we have the technology to detect exoplanets, but we are not yet able to fully capture them in photographic detail. Direct imaging of exoplanets is a huge challenge because stars are millions of times brighter than planets, making imaging them an extremely difficult task. Using advanced devices such as a coronagraph that blocks the starlight, it is possible to get an image of the planet, but it is still a big challenge.
However, the future in direct imaging of exoplanets looks promising. NASA is about to launch a new one telescope by Nancy Grace Romanwhich will have the ability to capture exoplanets with thousands of times more detail than current telescopes. New ground-based telescopes are also being planned that will be able to take much better pictures of exoplanets. For example, scientists place great expectations on An extremely large telescope (ELT) that grows in Chile or until planned A thirty-meter telescope and Havaji (TMT) The Large Magellan Telescope (GMT), which should be created at the Chilean observatory Las Campanas.
