Artist’s conception of the Gliese 251 exoplanet system. Gliese 251 is a nearby M dwarf star, hosting two super-Earth exoplanets. The newly-discovered outer planet, Gliese 251c, is a terrestrial-mass exoplanet candidate within the liquid-water habitable zone. Image credit: Michael Marcheschi
Today, the NEID Science Team, alongside the Science Team for NEID’s sister spectrograph HPF, announced the discovery of the exoplanet GJ 251c. GJ 251c is a potentially terrestrial-mass exoplanet in the liquid-water habitable zone of a very nearby M dwarf, GJ 251. In fact, the star is so close to the Solar System that it is an excellent candidate to be directly imaged by upcoming 30-meter telescopes.
The full story of this discovery is available on the HPF Science Blog. A research article containing the technical details was also published today in The Astronomical Journal, in a paper led by NEID Science Team member Corey Beard.