Gliese 649 is a small star with an orbiting exoplanet in the constellation

Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the ...

. It has an

apparent visual magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's lig ...

of 9.7, which is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. The system is located at a distance of 33.9 light years based on parallax, and is drifting further away with a radial velocity of 3.8 km/s. This is an M-type main-sequence star, a red dwarf, with a stellar classification of M1.0V. It has 52% of the mass of the Sun and 53% of the Sun's girth. In the visible light band, the star is radiating 4.4% of the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 3,621 K. It is spinning slowly with a rotation period of 24.9 days.

Planetary system

A Saturn-mass planet was detected around the red dwarf star by J. A. Johnson and associates in 2010. It has a

minimum mass In astronomy, minimum mass is the lower-bound calculated mass of observed objects such as planets, stars and binary systems, nebulae, and black holes. Minimum mass is a widely cited statistic for extrasolar planets detected by the radial veloci ...

32.8% of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

's mass and is located 1.15

astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits ...

s from its star in eccentric orbit (e=0.3). Assuming a luminosity of 4.5% that of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, the

habitable zone In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.J. F. Kast ...

is located at , thus the planet should be as cold as if it were located at from a Solar-like star. Also accounting for different

periastron An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any elli ...

and

apastron An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...

positions of 0.8 and respectively, the planet could likely show seasonal temperature changes.

Debris disk

Using results from the Herschel Space Observatory survey of 21 late-type stars carried out in 2010, a debris disk was discovered between approximately 6 and . The disk was not detected at 22µm by NASA's

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

so therefore it is likely to be below 100 Kelvin and similar to the Kuiper belt. The disk was marginally resolved, appearing very asymmetric, and so is probably consistent with being closer to edge-on, rather than face-on, in its inclination.

Planetary system

Debris disk

References

See also