Barnard's Star Research Articles

A sub-Earth-mass planet orbiting Barnard's star. No evidence of transits in TESS photometry

A sub-Earth-mass planet orbiting Barnard's star, designated as Barnard b, has recently been announced. At almost the same time, the first photometric data of Barnard's star by the Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was released in Sector 80. We explore the possibility of emergent transits of Barnard b in TESS photometry. The detrended 2 min light curve appears to be flat, with a flux root mean square of 0.411 parts per thousand. Attempts of blind and informed transit curve model inference suggest no evidence of transiting Barnard b, or any other body. This provides a 3sigma upper bound of 87.9 degrees for the orbital inclination of Barnard b.

Comprehensive High-resolution Chemical Spectroscopy of Barnard’s Star with SPIRou

Determination of fundamental parameters of stars impacts all fields of astrophysics, from galaxy evolution to constraining the internal structure of exoplanets. This paper presents a detailed spectroscopic analysis of Barnard’s star (otherwise known as Gl 699) that compares an exceptionally high-quality (an average signal-to-noise ratio of ∼1000 in the entire domain), high-resolution near-infrared (NIR) spectrum taken with Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/SPIRou to PHOENIX-ACES stellar atmosphere models. The observed spectrum shows thousands of lines not identified in the models with a similarly large number of lines present in the model but not in the observed data. We also identify several other caveats, such as continuum mismatch, unresolved contamination, and spectral lines significantly shifted from their expected wavelengths; all of these can be a source of bias for the determination of abundance. Out of >104 observed lines in the NIR that could be used for chemical spectroscopy, we identify a short list of a few hundred lines that are reliable. We present a novel method for determining the effective temperature (T eff) and overall metallicity of slowly rotating M dwarfs that uses several groups of lines as opposed to bulk spectral fitting methods. With this method, we infer T eff = 3231 ± 21 K for Barnard's star, consistent with the value of 3238 ± 11 K inferred from the interferometric method. We also provide measurements of the abundance of 15 different elements for Barnard's star, including the abundances of four elements (K, O, Y, Th) never reported before for this star. This work emphasizes the need to improve current atmosphere models to fully exploit the NIR domain for chemical spectroscopy analysis.

The Most Sensitive SETI Observations Toward Barnard's Star with FAST

Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been mainly focused on nearby stars and their planets in recent years. Barnard’s star is the second closest star system to the Sun and the closest star in the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) observable sky which makes the minimum Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power required for a hypothetical radio transmitter from Barnard’s star to be detected by FAST telescope a mere 4.36 × 108 W. In this paper, we present the FAST telescope as the most sensitive instrument for radio SETI observations toward nearby star systems and conduct a series of observations to Barnard’s star (GJ 699). By applying the multibeam coincidence matching strategy on the FAST telescope, we search for narrow-band signals (∼Hz) in the frequency range of 1.05–1.45 GHz, and two orthogonal linear polarization directions are recorded. Despite finding no evidence of radio technosignatures in our series of observations, we have developed predictions regarding the hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligence signal originating from Barnard’s star. These predictions are based on the star’s physical properties and our observation strategy.

WOBBLE: A Data-driven Analysis Technique for Time-series Stellar Spectra

In recent years, dedicated extreme-precision radial velocity (EPRV) spectrographs have produced vast quantities of high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise time-series spectra for bright stars. These data contain valuable information for the dual purposes of planet detection via the measured RVs and stellar characterization via the co-added spectra. However, considerable data analysis challenges exist in extracting these data products from the observed spectra at the highest possible precision, including the issue of poorly-characterized telluric absorption features and the common use of an assumed stellar spectral template. In both of these examples, precision-limiting reliance on external information can be sidestepped using the data directly. Here we propose a data-driven method to simultaneously extract precise RVs and infer the underlying stellar and telluric spectra using a linear model (in the log of flux). The model employs a convex objective and convex regularization to keep the optimization of the spectral components fast. We implement this method in wobble, an open-source python package which uses TensorFlow in one of its first non-neural-network applications to astronomical data. In this work, we demonstrate the performance of wobble on archival HARPS spectra. We recover the canonical exoplanet 51 Pegasi b, detect the secular RV evolution of the M dwarf Barnard's Star, and retrieve the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for the Hot Jupiter HD 189733b. The method additionally produces extremely high-S/N composite stellar spectra and detailed time-variable telluric spectra, which we also present here.

A candidate super-Earth planet orbiting near the snow line of Barnard's star.

Barnard's star is a red dwarf, and has the largest proper motion (apparent motion across the sky) of all known stars. At a distance of 1.8 parsecs1, it is the closest single star to the Sun; only the three stars in the α Centauri system are closer. Barnard's star is also among the least magnetically active red dwarfs known2,3 and has an estimated age older than the Solar System. Its properties make it a prime target for planetary searches; various techniques with different sensitivity limits have been used previously, including radial-velocity imaging4-6, astrometry7,8 and direct imaging9, but all ultimately led to negative or null results. Here we combine numerous measurements from high-precision radial-velocity instruments, revealing the presence of a low-amplitude periodic signal with a period of 233 days. Independent photometric and spectroscopic monitoring, as well as an analysis of instrumental systematic effects, suggest that this signal is best explained as arising from a planetary companion. The candidate planet around Barnard's star is a cold super-Earth, with a minimum mass of 3.2 times that of Earth, orbiting near its snow line (the minimum distance from the star at which volatile compounds could condense). The combination of all radial-velocity datasets spanning 20 years of measurements additionally reveals a long-term modulation that could arise from a stellar magnetic-activity cycle or from a more distant planetary object. Because of its proximity to the Sun, the candidate planet has a maximum angular separation of 220 milliarcseconds from Barnard's star, making it an excellent target for direct imaging and astrometric observations in the future.

High-cadence spectroscopy of M-dwarfs – II. Searching for stellar pulsations with HARPS

Stellar oscillations appear all across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Recent theoretical studies support their existence also in the atmospheres of M dwarfs. These studies predict for them short periodicities ranging from 20~min to 3~h. Our Cool Tiny Beats (CTB) programme aims at finding these oscillations for the very first time. With this goal, CTB explores the short time domain of M dwarfs using radial velocity data from the HARPS-ESO and HARPS-N high-precision spectrographs. Here we present the results for the two most long-term stable targets observed to date with CTB, GJ~588 and GJ~699 (i.e. Barnard's star). In the first part of this work we detail the correction of several instrumental effects. These corrections are specially relevant when searching for sub-night signals. Results show no significant signals in the range where M dwarfs pulsations were predicted. However, we estimate that stellar pulsations with amplitudes larger than $\sim0.5\,\mathrm{m\,s}^{-1}$ can be detected with a 90% completeness with our observations. This result, along with the excess of power regions detected in the periodograms, open the possibility of non-resolved very low amplitude pulsation signals. Next generation more precise instrumentation would be required to detect such oscillations. However, the possibility of detecting pulsating M-dwarf stars with larger amplitudes is feasible due to the short size of the analysed sample. This motivates the need for completeness of the CTB survey.

Constraints on the substellar companions in wide orbits around the Barnard's Star from CanariCam mid-infrared imaging

We have performed mid-infrared imaging of Barnard's Star, one of the nearest stars to the Sun, using CanariCam on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias. We aim to investigate an area within 1-10 arcsec separations, which for the 1.83 pc distance of the star translates to projected orbital separations of 1.8-18 AU (P > 12 yr), which have not been explored yet with astrometry or radial velocity programs. It is therefore an opportunity to enter the domain of distances where most giant planets are expected to form. We performed deep imaging in the N-band window (Si-2 filter, 8.7 {\mu}m) reaching a 3{\sigma} detection limit of 0.85+/-0.18 mJy and angular resolution of 0.24 arcsec, close to the diffraction limit of the telescope at this wavelength. A total of 80 min on-source integration time data were collected and combined for the deepest image. We achieved a dynamical range of 8.0+/-0.1 mag in the 8.7 {\mu}m band, at angular separations from ~2 to 10 arcsec and of ~6-8 mag at 1-2 arcsec. No additional sources were found. Our detectability limits provide further constraints to the presence of substellar companions of the Barnard's Star. According to solar metallicity evolutionary models, we can exclude companions of masses larger than 15 MJup (Teff > 400 K), ages of a few Gyr, and located in ~3.6-18 AU orbits with a 3{\sigma} confidence level. This minimum mass is approximately 5 MJup smaller than any previous imaging survey that explored the surroundings of Barnard's Star could restrict.

A search for TiO in the optical high-resolution transmission spectrum of HD 209458b: Hindrance due to inaccuracies in the line database

The spectral signature of an exoplanet can be separated from the spectrum of its host star using high-resolution spectroscopy. During such observations, the radial component of the planet's orbital velocity changes, resulting in a significant Doppler shift which allows its spectral features to be extracted. Aims: In this work, we aim to detect TiO in the optical transmission spectrum of HD 209458b. Gaseous TiO has been suggested as the cause of the thermal inversion layer invoked to explain the dayside spectrum of this planet. Method: We used archival data from the 8.2m Subaru Telescope taken with the High Dispersion Spectrograph of a transit of HD209458b in 2002. We created model transmission spectra which include absorption by TiO, and cross-correlated them with the residual spectral data after removal of the dominating stellar absorption features. We subsequently co-added the correlation signal in time, taking into account the change in Doppler shift due to the orbit of the planet. Results: We detect no significant cross-correlation signal due to TiO, though artificial injection of our template spectra into the data indicates a sensitivity down to a volume mixing ratio of ~10E-10. However, cross-correlating the template spectra with a HARPS spectrum of Barnard's star yields only a weak wavelength-dependent correlation, even though Barnard's star is an M4V dwarf which exhibits clear TiO absorption. We infer that the TiO line list poorly match the real positions of TiO lines at spectral resolutions of ~100,000. Similar line lists are also used in the PHOENIX and Kurucz stellar atmosphere suites and we show that their synthetic M-dwarf spectra also correlate poorly with the HARPS spectra of Barnard's star and five other M-dwarfs. We conclude that the lack of an accurate TiO line list is currently critically hampering this high-resolution retrieval technique.

Portrait of a dynamic neighbour

Brown dwarfs are celestial objects that lack the mass to become fully fledged stars. High-resolution maps of one such object add to the evidence that these exotic worlds have highly dynamic weather and climate. See Letter p.654 The recently discovered system known as Luhman 16AB is a binary consisting of two brown dwarfs — objects much bigger than planets but not big enough to become stars — and is a mere six light years from us. Only Alpha Centauri and Barnard's star are closer. Ian Crossfield et al. have now mapped the surface of brown dwarf Luhman 16B in the infrared and find large-scale surface patterns indicative of patchy clouds. Monitoring suggests that the characteristic timescale for the evolution of global weather patterns is about one day. Further observations of the evolution of weather patterns on brown dwarfs could provide a new benchmark for understanding how global circulation conditions affect dusty atmospheres on brown dwarfs and giant extrasolar planets.

Surfing the photon noise: New techniques to find low‐mass planets around M dwarfs

AbstractThe current precision radial velocities techniques to detect low mass planets in M dwarf are quickly reviewed. This includes high resolution spectroscopic observations made both in the optical and in the near infrared. We discuss that, given the current instrumental performance, optical RVs are still far ahead over other approaches. However, this situation might change soon with the advent of new spectrographs with red/nIR capabilities. We review a newly developed method to obtain precision RV measurements on stabilized spectrographs and how it is implemented to archival HARPS observations. In addition to get much closer to the photon noise, this approach allows us to identify and filter out wavelength dependent noise sources achieving unprecedented accuracy on G, K and specially M dwarfs. We show how including red/infrared observations is of paramount importance to efficiently and unambiguously detect very low mass planets around cool spectral types. As examples, we show new measurements on Barnard's star indicating that the star is stable down to 0.9 cm s–1over a time‐span of 4 years and how RV signals correlated with activity indices disappear when using the reddest half of the HARPS wavelength range. To conclude, we present new results, detections and describe the implications in terms of planet/multi‐planet abundances around cool stars. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

PRECISE DOPPLER MONITORING OF BARNARD'S STAR

We present 248 precise Doppler measurements of Barnard's Star (Gl 699), the second nearest star system to Earth, obtained from Lick and Keck Observatories during 25 years between 1987 and 2012. The early precision was 20 \ms{} but was 2 \ms{} during the last 8 years, constituting the most extensive and sensitive search for Doppler signatures of planets around this stellar neighbor. We carefully analyze the 136 Keck radial velocities spanning 8 years by first applying a periodogram analysis to search for nearly circular orbits. We find no significant periodic Doppler signals with amplitudes above $\sim$2 \ms{}, setting firm upper limits on the minimum mass (\msini) of any planets with orbital periods from 0.1 to 1000 days. Using a Monte Carlo analysis for circular orbits, we determine that planetary companions to Barnard's Star with masses above 2 \mearth{} and periods below 10 days would have been detected. Planets with periods up to 2 years and masses above 10 \mearth{} (0.03 \mjup) are also ruled out. A similar analysis allowing for eccentric orbits yields comparable mass limits. The habitable zone of Barnard's Star appears to be devoid of roughly Earth-mass planets or larger, save for face-on orbits. Previous claims of planets around the star by van de Kamp are strongly refuted. The radial velocity of Barnard's Star increases with time at $4.515\pm0.002$ \msy{}, consistent with the predicted geometrical effect, secular acceleration, that exchanges transverse for radial components of velocity.

Galactic Internet made possible by star gravitational lensing

In this paper we study how to create a radio bridge between the Sun and any other star made up by both the gravitational lenses of the Sun and that star. The alignment for this radio bridge to work is very strict, but the power-saving is enormous, due to the huge contributions of the two stars' lenses to the overall antenna gain of the system.In particular, we study in detail:(1)The Sun–Alpha Centauri A radio bridge.(2)The Sun–Barnard's star radio bridge.(3)The Sun–Sirius A radio bridge.(4)The radio bridge between the Sun and any Sun-like star located in the Galactic Bulge.(5)The radio bridge between the Sun and a similar Sun-like star located inside the Andromeda galaxy (M31).Finally, we find the information channel capacity for each of the above radio bridges, putting thus a physical constraint to the maximum information transfer that will be enabled even by exploiting the stars as gravitational lenses. The conclusion is that a Galactic Internet is indeed physically possible. May be the Galactic Internet already is in existence, and was created long ago by civilizations more advanced than ours. But the potential for creating such a system has only recently been realized by Humans.

CHARACTERIZING THE COOL KOIs. III. KOI 961: A SMALL STAR WITH LARGE PROPER MOTION AND THREE SMALL PLANETS

We present the characterization of the star KOI 961, an M dwarf with transit signals indicative of three short-period exoplanets, originally discovered by the Kepler Mission. We proceed by comparing KOI 961 to Barnard's Star, a nearby, well-characterized mid-M dwarf. By comparing colors, optical and near-infrared spectra, we find remarkable agreement between the two, implying similar effective temperatures and metallicities. Both are metal-poor compared to the Solar neighborhood, have low projected rotational velocity, high absolute radial velocity, large proper motion and no quiescent H-alpha emission--all of which is consistent with being old M dwarfs. We combine empirical measurements of Barnard's Star and expectations from evolutionary isochrones to estimate KOI 961's mass (0.13 +/- 0.05 Msun), radius (0.17 +/- 0.04 Rsun) and luminosity (2.40 x 10^(-3.0 +/- 0.3) Lsun). We calculate KOI 961's distance (38.7 +/- 6.3 pc) and space motions, which, like Barnard's Star, are consistent with a high scale-height population in the Milky Way. We perform an independent multi-transit fit to the public Kepler light curve and significantly revise the transit parameters for the three planets. We calculate the false-positive probability for each planet-candidate, and find a less than 1% chance that any one of the transiting signals is due to a background or hierarchical eclipsing binary, validating the planetary nature of the transits. The best-fitting radii for all three planets are less than 1 Rearth, with KOI 961.03 being Mars-sized (Rp = 0.57 +/- 0.18 Rearth), and they represent some of the smallest exoplanets detected to date.

Project Icarus: Optimisation of nuclear fusion propulsion for interstellar missions

The Daedalus spacecraft design was a two-stage configuration carrying 50,000 tonnes of DHe 3 propellant. Daedalus was powered by electron driven Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) to implode the pellets at a frequency of 250 Hz. The mission was to Barnard's star 5.9 light years away in a duration of around 50 years. This paper is related to the successor Project Icarus, a theoretical engineering design study that began on 30 September 2009 and is a joint initiative between the Tau Zero Foundation and The British Interplanetary Society. In the first part of this paper, we explore ‘flyby’ variations on the Daedalus propellant utilisation for two different mission targets: Barnard's star and Epsilon Eridani, 10.7 light years away. With a fixed propellant mass a number of staged configurations (1–4) are derived for an optimal configuration but then moving to an off-optimal configuration due to the requirement for a high final science payload mass. Some comments are then made on the ICF pellet configuration compared to the typical pellets fielded at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and those proposed for the Vista and Longshot fusion based propulsion designs. This is a working progress report, which aims to study perturbations of the Daedalus baseline design as part of a trade study. This is a submission of the Project Icarus Study Group.

The M dwarf planet search programme at the ESO VLT + UVES

We present radial velocity (RV) measurements of our sample of 40 M dwarfs from our planet search programme with VLT+UVES begun in 2000. Although with our RV precision down to 2–2.5 m/s and timebase line of up to 7 years, we are capable of finding planets of a few Earth masses in the close-in habitable zones of M dwarfs, there is no detection of a planetary companion. To demonstrate this we present mass detection limits allowing us to exclude Jupiter-mass planets up to 1 AU for most of our sample stars. We identified 6 M dwarfs that host a brown dwarf or low-mass stellar companion. With the exception of these, all other sample stars show low RV variability with an rmsm/s. Some high proper motion stars exhibit a linear RV trend consistent with their secular acceleration. Furthermore, we examine our data sets for a possible correlation between RVs and stellar activity as seen in variations of the H<i>α<i/> line strength. For Barnard's star we found a significant anticorrelation, but most of the sample stars do not show such a correlation.

Barnard's Star and the M Dwarf Temperature Scale

The recently measured angular diameter of Barnard's star, together with its large and precise parallax, and a spectral energy distribution that extends from the near-ultraviolet to almost 12 μm establish some of the star's fundamental properties—we find a bolometric luminosity L = (3.46 ± 0.17) × 10-3 L⊙, radius R = 0.200 ± 0.008 R⊙, and effective temperature Teff = 3134 ± 102 K. Accurate knowledge of those parameters helps in turn to constrain the star's metallicity and mass. Although it is evidently possible to estimate bolometric fluxes with good accuracy from photometry alone, angular diameters present more of a challenge, and we examine alternative methods for determining them, namely, through the use of the Barnes-Evans relation and the infrared flux method. We find further evidence that even state-of-the-art M dwarf models, which appear to yield good results for the effective temperatures, nevertheless underestimate the radii of the actual stars.

The low-level radial velocity variability in Barnard's star (= GJ 699)

We report results from of high precision radial velocity monitoring of Barnard's star. The high RV measurement precision of the VLT-UT2+UVES of made the following findings possible. (1) The first detection of the change in the RV of a star caused by its space motion (RV secular acceleration). (2) An anti-correlation of the measured RV with the strength of the filling-in of the line by emission. (3) Very stringent mass upper limits to planetary companions. Using only data from the first 2 years, we obtain a best-fit value for the RV secular acceleration of . This agrees within with the predicted value of based on the Hipparcos proper motion and parallax combined with the known absolute radial velocity of the star. When the RV data of the last half-year are added the best-fit slope is strongly reduced to ( away from the predicted value), clearly suggesting the presence of additional RV variability in the star. Part of it can be attributed to stellar activity as we demonstrate by correlating the residual RVs with an index that describes the filling-in of the H line by emission. A correlation coefficient of -0.50 indicates that the appearance of active regions causes a blueshift of photospheric absorption lines. Assuming that active regions basically inhibit convection we discuss the possibility that the fundamental (inactive) convection pattern in this M4V star produces a convective redshift which would indicate that the majority of the absorption lines relevant for our RV measurements is formed in a region of convective overshoot. This interpretation could possibly extend a trend indicated in the behaviour of earlier spectral types that exhibit convective blueshift, but with decreasing line asymmetries and blueshifts as one goes from G to K dwarfs. Based on this assumption, we estimate that the variation of the visible plage coverage is about 20%. We also determine upper limits to the projected mass and to the true mass m of hypothetical planetary companions in circular orbits. For the separation range we exclude any planet with and . Throughout the habitable zone around Barnard's star, i.e. , we exclude planets with and .

Discovery of a New Nearby Star

We report the discovery of a nearby star with a very large proper motion of 5.06 +/- 0.03 arcsec/yr. The star is called SO025300.5+165258 and referred to herein as HPMS (high proper motion star). The discovery came as a result of a search of the SkyMorph database, a sensitive and persistent survey that is well suited for finding stars with high proper motions. There are currently only 7 known stars with proper motions greater than 5 arcsec/yr. We have determined a preliminary value for the parallax of pi = 0.43 +/- 0.13 arcsec. If this value holds our new star ranks behind only the Alpha Centauri system (including Proxima Centauri) and Barnard's star in the list of our nearest stellar neighbours. The spectrum and measured tangential velocity indicate that HPMS is a main-sequence star with spectral type M6.5. However, if our distance measurement is correct, the HPMS is underluminous by 1.2 +/- 0.7 mag.

The gravitational lenses of alpha centauri a, b, c and of barnard's star

The gravitational lenses of the three nearest stars, Alpha Centauri A, B and C (Proxima Centauri), are studied in this paper. For each star, the minimal focal distance is found, and turns out to equal 679.263, 563.485 and 112.138 AU, respectively, plus or minus the (large) uncertainties deriving from the uncertainties in the estimates of the star masses and radii. A comparison of these three minimal focal distances against the corresponding value for the Sun (550 AU, or, more correctly, 548.230 AU) is then made, but it is clearly pointed out that all these minimal focal distances are just the theoretical values given by Einstein's deflection formula for the corresponding “naked star”, i.e. the star as if it had no corona around! The study of the true focal distances that follow from taking the corona into account is much more difficult and uncertain, and has to be delayed to further research. For the naked stars, we study the deflection of radio waves for five different frequencies: the hydrogen line at 1.420 GHz, the water maser at 22 GHz, NASA's Interstellar Probe (ISP) telecommunication frequency at 32 GHz (K a band), the Cosmic Microwave Background peak frequency at 160.378 GHz and finally the positronium frequency at 203.385 GHz. For each frequency the antenna patterns of the three naked stars gravitational lenses are given. Finally, all the above data are derived also for the fourth star in increasing distance from the Sun, Barnard's star.

Nearby Microlensing Events: Identification of the Candidates for theSpace Interferometry Mission

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is the instrument of choice when it comes to observing astrometric microlensing events where nearby, usually high proper motion, stars (lenses) pass in front of more distant stars (sources). Each such encounter produces a deflection in the source's apparent position that, when observed by SIM, can lead to a precise mass determination of the nearby lens star. We search for lens-source encounters during the 2005-2015 period using Hipparcos, ACT, and NLTT to select lenses, and USNO-A2.0 to search for the corresponding sources, and rank these by the SIM time required for a 1% mass measurement. For Hipparcos and ACT lenses, the lens distance and lens-source impact parameter are precisely determined so that the events are well characterized. We present 32 candidates beginning with a 61 Cyg A event in 2012 that requires only a few minutes of SIM time. Proxima Centauri and Barnard's star each generate several events. For NLTT lenses, the distance is known only to a factor of 3, and the impact parameter only to 1''. Together, these produce uncertainties of a factor ~10 in the amount of SIM time required. We present a list of 146 NLTT candidates and show how single-epoch CCD photometry of the candidates could reduce the uncertainty in SIM time to a factor of ~1.5.