A team of astronomers has found an exoplanet orbiting 40 Eridani A, a nearby star well known in the fictional world of “Star Trek” as the home of science officer Spock’s home planet: Vulcan. The newly discovered exoplanet was located by the 1.3-meter Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope located in Arizona (USA). Thus, the ancestral home of Spock and his species, has just become a little more real thanks to the work of these scientists.
“The new planet is a ‘super-Earth’ that orbits the star HD 26965, which is only 16 light years from Earth , making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another star similar to the Sun,” according to words of astronomer Jian Ge of the University of Florida. “The planet is about twice the size of Earth and orbits its star with a period of 42 days just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone .”
The orange star is slightly cooler and slightly less massive than Earth’s Sun but has a similar magnetic cycle.
HD 26965 – 40 Eridani A – is a triple star system.
“This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the stars of most of the known planets discovered to date. Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock’s house,” he said Bo Ma of the University of Florida and lead author of the article published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
This is the first discovery for the Dharma Planet Survey and demonstrates the value of telescopes dedicated to “making high-precision, high-cadence radial velocity observations” to find more Earth-like planets and more super-earths in the habitable zones around nearby stars. ” Jian Ge continues.
Star Trek and Vulcan
Because the creators of “Star Trek” associated the planet Vulcan with a real star, named 40 Eridani A, scientists have wondered for years if there was a real equivalent of the beloved sci-fi planet, with or without pointy-eared inhabitants. .
As we say, HD 26965, it is a star a little smaller and cooler than our Sun but it also has some clear similarities to the star on Earth: it is about the same age and has a fairly similar sunspot pattern, which they make it an ideal host star for an advanced civilization – like the Vulcans, even if it is in fiction.
Two additional stars accompany HD 26965, and would be visible from the planet’s surface. The planet itself doesn’t look as attractive as the star, because this world seems to orbit too close to its sun to be in the habitable zone where liquid water can be held on the surface. However, scientists are still determining exactly what other characteristics determine a planet’s habitability.
Referencia: Bo Ma et al. The first super-Earth detection from the high cadence and high radial velocity precision Dharma Planet Survey, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty1933
Crédito imagen: Don Davis
