HARPS spectrograph tagged posts

Nearby Star Hosts Closest Alien Planet in the ‘Habitable Zone’

This is a simulation of the orbital configuration of the Wolf 1061 system. Wolf 1061 is an inactive red dwarf star, smaller and cooler than our sun, 14 light years away. The orbits for the planets b, c and d (ordered from the inner planet to the outer) have periods of 4.9 days, 17.9 days and 67.2 days. In the simulation we show the planet orbits as all lying in a single plane. The planetary habitable zone around the star is marked in green -- the colors grade from red (where a planet would be too hot), through green (where the surface of a planet could sustain liquid water), through to blue (where a planet would be too cold). Credit: Made using Universe Sandbox 2 software from universesandbox.com

This is a simulation of the orbital configuration of the Wolf 1061 system. Wolf 1061 is an inactive red dwarf star, smaller and cooler than our sun, 14 light years away. The orbits for the planets b, c and d (ordered from the inner planet to the outer) have periods of 4.9 days, 17.9 days and 67.2 days. In the simulation we show the planet orbits as all lying in a single plane. The planetary habitable zone around the star is marked in green — the colors grade from red (where a planet would be too hot), through green (where the surface of a planet could sustain liquid water), through to blue (where a planet would be too cold). Credit: Made using Universe Sandbox 2 software from universesandbox.com

UNSW astronomers have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet found outside our sol...

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