Barnard is a single star in the constellation Ophiuchus. A ninth-magnitude cold red dwarf, small and too faint to be seen with the naked eye. Named after astronomer Edward Barnard, who discovered it in 1916. This celestial body is only 6 light-years away from our Sun. Only three stars in Alpha Centauri are relatively close, which is why science fiction writers often use Barnard as the heroine of their works. There will be at least ten. This star is also sometimes mentioned in computer games.
The mass of a single star is only 17% of that of the Sun, the radius is 15-20% of the radius of the Sun, and the luminosity is 00004 sunlight. The apparent magnitude of Barnard's star is 957m。It is assumed that its axis rotation period is slightly greater than 130 days. Spots and flares were detected on the star, indicating that the star was showing some activity.
The main characteristic of Barnard is its unusually fast self-movement. It is often referred to as the "Barnard Flying Star" or "Runaway". This is because it moves at an unusually high speed in the sky.
For an observer on Earth, the star has moved 0 in the sky in 174 years5° (this is the viewing angle of the Moon and the Sun). No other known star moves at such a speed.
Scientists studied the Doppler shift of the centline of the Barnard star spectra and found that its velocity was 1068 km sec. Considering that this velocity has a perpendicular component of 90 kilometers to the Earth's observer's line of sight, we can confidently say that the star is flying towards us. In 11800, it will be 38 light years to become the closest neighbor to the Sun. Provided, of course, that no other unknown dark stars have been discovered by that time.
Astrophysicists have long pondered what makes Barnard's star so fast. Some people think she's just hyperactive, which makes her move faster. Others say it must be gravitationally pulled by a heavy object, such as a black hole or a massive star.
In 2018, a group of scientists from Europe conducted research using a telescope located in Chile. They calculated the velocity of the star relative to the center of the galaxy. The speed is 142 km/h in seconds. It is also very fast compared to the average velocity of stars within the Milky Way. This means that Barnard Star has hyperbolic orbits. In other words, you can't fly as fast as you stay in orbit around the center of the Milky Way.
This movement can only be explained by the fact that Barnard escaped from another galaxy in the Large Magellanic Cloud during the interaction of two dwarf galaxies on the outer part of the Milky Way. Only then will Barnard begin to "float freely", passing through intergalactic space and then sailing along the Milky Way. Thus, we can conclude that its speed is not related to some local influence, but to the movement of the entire galaxy.
The second secret and mystery of stars is the existence of planets. Astronomer pVan de Kamp proposed in the late 60s of the 20th century that Barnard had **moons that could deviate its motion from a straight line. He calculated that their masses were the masses of Jupiter. 63 and 089 times, the orbital period is respectively. 4 and 248 years. Based on mass estimates, astronomers also calculated the distance of the satellite from the star. 9 and 45 astronomical units (1 astronomical unit is equal to the distance from the Earth to the Sun).
However, new research conducted in the 2000s shows that this view is wrong. In 2003, two years of observations of stellar radial velocity were published. They contain calculations of the mass and orbital period of the planets orbiting Barnard's star. As a result, a mass of more than 0 is excluded86 Jupiter and orbital radius of 0017-0.98 astronomical units of planets exist.
A team of scientists at the University of California used the Lick and Keck Observatory to make 248 measurements of the radial velocity of stars. They concluded that Barnard cannot be orbited by planets with masses greater than two Earth's masses and orbital periods of less than 10 days. In addition, the possible existence of planets with masses greater than 10 Earth's masses and orbital periods of less than two years has not been confirmed.
In 2018, it was revealed that Barnard Star did indeed possess a distance of 0404 astronomical units of the planet GJ 699 B. This distance is 2 shorter than the distance from the sun to the earth5 times, but due to the low luminosity of the star, the red dwarf receives very little energy. The mass of the planet is more than three times the mass of the Earth, and it takes about 230 days for the planet to revolve around its star. That is, all the ** were proven wrong.
The temperature on the planet's surface is estimated at -170°C. But in 2021, the existence of GJ 699 B was called into question because the radial velocity signal with the planetary orbital period disappeared in the new data from the Hobe-Eberly telescope. To date, the search continues.