An international team of astronomers led by Robert A. Wittenmyer of UNSW Australia has announced the discovery of the planet Gliese 832c, about sixteen light years from Earth. According to preliminary assessments carried out on the similarity of this planet with the Earth, it’s one of the best candidates for potential habitability found so far.
The star Gliese 832 is a red dwarf whose mass is about half that of the Sun. In 2008, the discovery of the gas giant planet Gliese 832b was announced, now the announcement of the discovery of the planet Gliese 832c, which is a super-Earth, is certainly much more interesting.
The planet Gliese 832c was discovered by analyzing the data with the HARPS-EARTH (Radial Velocity Template-Enhanced Application Re-analysis) software of the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph and the UCLES (University College London Echelle Spectrograph) spectrograph. Its orbital period is just 36 days but since its star is a white dwarf it’s in its habitable zone.
The energy that Gliese 832c receives from its star is more or less as much as the Earth receives from the Sun. however, its orbit is quite eccentric, which means that it has a rather strong deviation from a circle. The consequence is that it could have strong seasonal variations.
The evaluations of the mass of the planet Gliese 832c are stile approximate. This super-Earth has a mass that is at least five times that of Earth and is a rocky planet so it could be habitable. The Earth Similarity Index (ESI), a parameter that measures the similarity of a planet with Earth, of Gliese 832c is 0.81, one of the best found so far but that might not be enough.
The ESI parameter isn’t an index of potential habitability and there are still elements of the planet Gliese 832c unknown but they’re essential for its accurate assessment. First of all, we don’t know its composition and the atmosphere of the planet has yet to be studied.
In these cases, there may be a tendency to get caught up in the enthusiasm. The discovery of planet Gliese 832c is certainly very interesting so it will be subjected to further analyzes and observations in the hope that it’s really similar to Earth. If the atmosphere was dense, however, it could be more like Venus.
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