36 Ophiuchi
Encyclopedia
36 Ophiuchi is a triple star system 19.5 light years away from Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. It is in the constellation Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus is a large constellation located around the celestial equator. Its name is from the Greek "serpent-bearer", and it is commonly represented as a man grasping the snake that is represented by the constellation Serpens. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century...

.

The primary and secondary stars are nearly identical orange main sequence
Main sequence
The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...

 dwarves of spectral type K0/K1 and the tertiary star is an orange main sequence
Main sequence
The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...

 dwarf of spectral type K5.

Star C is separated from the A-B pair by 700 arc seconds, compared to a minimum of 4.6 arcsec for A-B, so it has a negligible effect on the movements of the A-B pair. Both A and B have active chromosphere
Chromosphere
The chromosphere is a thin layer of the Sun's atmosphere just above the photosphere, roughly 2,000 kilometers deep....

s.

Hunt for substellar objects

The McDonald Observatory
McDonald Observatory
The McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near the unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Fowlkes and Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas...

 team has set limits to the presence of one or more planets around 36 Ophiuchi A with masses between 0.13 and 5.4 Jupiter masses and average separations spanning between 0.05 and 5.2 astronomical units, although the outermost stable orbits around either 36 Ophiuchi A or 36 Ophiuchi B are possible not beyond 1.5 AU.

External links

  • http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604171
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