Teegarden's Star
Star
Teegarden's Star - a tiny, ultracool red dwarf 12.5 light-years away in Aries, so faint it was overlooked until 2003. Despite its feeble light it hosts three confirmed planets, two of them in the temperate zone.
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Key facts
Mass
1.93 × 10²⁹ kg
0.097 M☉
Radius
83,484 km
12% of the Sun's radius
Surface temperature
3,034 K (2,761 °C)
Luminosity
2.79 × 10²³ W
Spectral type
M7V (ultracool red dwarf)
Science
Physical
- Mass
- 1.93 × 10²⁹ kg · 0.097 M☉
- Radius
- 83,484 km · 12% of the Sun's radius
- Density
- 79,157 kg/m³ · 79× water
- Computed from mass and radius
- Spectral type
- M7V (ultracool red dwarf)
Motion through space
- Proper motion
- 5.12 arcseconds per year · its drift across our sky
- SIMBAD — 2020yCat.1350....0G, 2014AJ....147...20N
- Radial velocity
- +63.0 km/s · moving away from the Sun
- SIMBAD — 2020yCat.1350....0G, 2014AJ....147...20N
- Speed across our line of sight
- 93 km/s
- Computed from proper motion and parallax
- Speed through space, relative to the Sun
- 112 km/s
- Computed from proper motion, parallax and radial velocity
Composition
- By mass
- A red dwarf only about 10% of the Sun's mass and 0.07% of its light; one of the faintest stars in the solar neighbourhood.
Temperature
- Surface
- 3,034 K (2,761 °C)
Radiation & temperature
- Luminosity
- 2.79 × 10²³ W · 0.00073 L☉
- Surface temperature
- 3,034 K (2,761 °C)
- Peak wavelength
- 955 nm · near-infrared (mostly invisible to the eye)
- Computed (Wien's law) from the surface temperature
Discovery & history
- Discovered
- 2003
- By
- Bonnard J. Teegarden et al.
- Method
- Telescope
- Name
- Named for the American astrophysicist Bonnard J. Teegarden, whose team found the star in 2003.
Discovered only in 2003 by Bonnard Teegarden's team, who mined old asteroid- survey images for overlooked fast-moving stars. In 2019 the CARMENES spectrograph revealed its planets; a third was added in 2024.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image