A team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune- mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.
This exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun – is the smallest ever found up to now [1] and it completes a full orbit in 13 days. It is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, given that its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581 [2], is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet nevertheless lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid!
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explains Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result.
“Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans,” he adds.
“Liquid water is critical to life as we know it,” avows Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University (France). “Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X.”
The host star, Gliese 581, is among the 100 closest stars to us, located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra (“the Scales”). It has a mass of only one third the mass of the Sun. Such red dwarfs are at least 50 times intrinsically fainter than the Sun and are the most common stars in our Galaxy: among the 100 closest stars to the Sun, 80 belong to this class.
“Red dwarfs are ideal targets for the search for such planets because they emit less light, and the habitable zone is thus much closer to them than it is around the Sun,” emphasizes Xavier Bonfils, a co-worker from Lisbon University. Any planets that lie in this zone are more easily detected with the radial-velocity method [3], the most successful in detecting exoplanets.
Two years ago, the same team of astronomers already found a planet around Gliese 581 (see ESO 30/05). With a mass of 15 Earth-masses, i.e. similar to that of Neptune, it orbits its host star in 5.4 days. At the time, the astronomers had already seen hints of another planet. They therefore obtained a new set of measurements and found the new super-Earth, but also clear indications for another one, an 8 Earth-mass planet completing an orbit in 84 days. The planetary system surrounding Gliese 581 contains thus no fewer than 3 planets of 15 Earth masses or less, and as such is a quite remarkable system.
The discovery was made thanks to HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher), perhaps the most precise spectrograph in the world. Located on the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, Chile, HARPS is able to measure velocities with a precision better than one metre per second (or 3.6 km/h)! HARPS is one of the most successful instruments for detecting exoplanets and holds already several recent records, including the discovery of another ‘Trio of Neptunes’ (ESO 18/06, see also ESO 22/04).
Commenting on the discovery Glenn White, Professor of Astronomy at The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and at The Open University, and a member of the science team of the European Space Agency's DARWIN Planet characterisation mission said: "This is an important step in the search for true Earth like exoplanets. As the methods become more and more refined, astronomers are narrowing in on to the ultimate goal - the detection of a true Earth like planet elsewhere. Obviously this newly discovered planet and its companions in the Gliese 581 system will become prominent targets for missions like ESA's Darwin and NASA's Terrestrial planet Finder when they fly in about a decade."
Dr Martin Dominik, Royal Society University Research Fellow from St Andrews University, who has made essential contributions to the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, one of the closest contenders to the newly found planet said, “"It is hard to believe that Earth should be the only place in the Universe that harbours life. The question about the existence of life forms outside Earth and its atmosphere has been around for centuries, if not much longer. Living generations are now facing a realistic chance being provided with clues about whether our habitat is unique in the Universe or not." He adds, "While we have already seen previous spectacular discoveries of super-Earths that were either too hot or cold for life to develop, the first exoplanet where liquid surface water could exist has now been found."
A fellow astronomer, Jane Greaves from St Andrews University, said "This is a very exciting result. Although some planets were already known of low enough mass to be rocky like the Earth, I didn't expect that one potentially with water - that could be used by life - would be found so soon!"
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Science Contacts
Stéphane Udry, Michel Mayor
Geneva Observatory, Switzerland
Phone: +41 22 755 26 11
Xavier Delfosse, Thierry Forveille
LAOG, France
Phone: +33 476 51 42 06
Xavier Bonfils
Lisbonne Observatory, Portugal
Phone: +351 21 361 67 43
UK
astronomers available to comment
Professor Glenn White – Open University/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Tel: 01908 652735/01235 446711
Mobile: 0771 4234897
Dr Martin Dominik – University of St Andrews
Tel: 01334 463068. Home: 01334 470305
Mobile: 07753 388787
Press Contacts
Henri Boffin – ESO Press Office
Tel: +49 893200 6222
Gill Ormrod – Science and Technology Facilities Council Press Office
Tel: 01793 442012. Mobile: 0781 8013509
Notes to Editors
This research is reported in a paper submitted as a Letter to the Editor of Astronomy and Astrophysics (“The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets : XI. An habitable super-Earth (5 MEarth) in a 3- planet system”, by S. Udry et al.)
The team is composed of Stéphane Udry, Michel Mayor, Christophe Lovis, Francesco Pepe, and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), Xavier Bonfils (Lisbonne Observatory, Portugal), Xavier Delfosse, Thierry Forveille, and C.Perrier (LAOG, Grenoble, France), François Bouchy (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France), and Jean- Luc Bertaux (Service d'Aéronomie du CNRS, France)
[1] Using the radial velocity method, astronomers can only obtain a minimum mass (as it is multiplied by the sine of the inclination of the orbital plane to the line of sight, which is unknown). From a statistical point of view, this is however often close to the real mass of the system. Two other systems have a mass close to this. The icy planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, discovered by microlensing with a network of telescopes including one at La Silla (ESO 03/06), has a (real) mass of 5.5 Earth masses. It, however, orbits much farther from its small host star than the present one and is hence much colder. The other is one of the planets surrounding the star Gliese 876. It has a minimum mass of 5.89 Earth masses (and a probable real mass of 7.53 Earth masses) and completes an orbit in less than 2 days, making it too hot for liquid water to be present.
[2] Gl 581, or Gliese 581, is the 581th entry in the Gliese Catalogue, which lists all known stars within 25 parsecs (81.5 light years) of the Sun. It was originally compiled by Gliese and published in 1969, and later updated by Gliese and Jahreiss in 1991.
[3] This fundamental observational method is based on the detection of variations in the velocity of the central star, due to the changing direction of the gravitational pull from an (unseen) exoplanet as it orbits the star. The evaluation of the measured velocity variations allows deducing the planet's orbit, in particular the period and the distance from the star, as well as a minimum mass
The discovery team is from Switzerland, France and Portugal.
