20 May 2003

Astronomers have stumbled onto a previously unknown star in Earth's stellar neighborhood, a red dwarf that appears to be the third-closest star system to our own.

"Our new stellar neighbor is a pleasant surprise, since we weren't looking for it," Bonnard Teegarden, an astrophysicist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a written statement.

Teegarden, the lead author of the study, and his colleagues happened upon the star while searching for nearby white dwarfs, the remains of collapsed stars that quickly traverse the night sky. [...]

It was while going through the database that researchers discovered the dim red dwarf, which shines about 300,000 times fainter than the Sun. It's faintness has veiled it from astronomers until now, researchers said.

NASA astronomers estimate the newly discovered star to sit about 7.8 light years from Earth towards the constellation Aries. The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri, which is actually a set of triplets burning brightly about four light years away. Barnard's Star, the next-nearest neighbor is a slightly further hop at about six light years from Earth. One light year is about six trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).

U.S. Naval Observatory is currently taking more observations of the star to pin down its exact distance from Earth. Teegarden's research on the red dwarf will appear in the publication Astrophysical Journal, although a final publication date has yet to be set.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/red_dwarf_030520.html

Category: Perspective