Gliese 570 / HR 5568 ABC

JPL, CalTech, NASA


Larger illustration


Astronomers have identified
Gliese 570 A as a prime target
for the Terrestrial Planet Finder
(TPF), now planned for launch
between 2014 and 2020.

As a relatively bright star in Earth's night sky, Star A is catalogued as Harvard Revised (HR) 5568, a numbering system derived from the 1908 Revised Harvard Photometry catalogue of stars visible to many Humans with the naked eye. The HR system has been preserved through its successor, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue -- revised and expanded through the hard work of E. Dorrit Hoffleit and others. (More discussion on star names and catalogue numbers is available from Alan MacRobert at Sky and Telescope and from Professor James B. Kaler's Star Names.)

In the 1990s, the European HIPPARCOS satellite mission measured a parallax for the close binary Stars B and C that suggested a distance of 24.4 ly from Sol with a relatively large error (Plx=133.63 mas, +/- 33.56), about five ly farther than the estimated distance to Star A. Earth-based parallax and orbit observations made over a longer time frame, however, suggest that the two stars are actually bound to Star A and so must actually lie at the same distance from Sol (Staffan Soderhjelm, 1999; and Yale Parallax Catalogue). On January 15, 2000, astronomers announced the discovery of a cool methane brown dwarf in a wide orbit (Burgasser et al, 2000; press release; additional graphics; and more details below). (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)

Gliese 570 A

This main sequence, orange-red dwarf (K4-5 Ve) may have just over three fourths (76 percent) of Sol's mass (RECONS), about 77 percent of its diameter, (Alan Hale, 1994, page 320; and Soderblom et al, 1991), only 15.6 percent of its luminosity, and a rotational period of 48.3 days. The star appears to be as enriched (102 percent) as Sol with elements heavier than hydrogen ("metallicity"), based on its abundance of iron (Cayrel de Strobel et al, 1991, page 297). Some alternative useful star catalogue numbers for the star are: HR 5568 A, Gl 570 A, Hip 73184, HD 131977, BD-20 4125, SAO 183040, FK5 1391, LHS 387, LTT 5949, LFT 1161, LPM 551, Vys or McC 726 A, and ADS 9446 A.

© Torben Krogh & Mogens Winther,

(Amtsgymnasiet and EUC Syd Gallery,
student photo used with permission)


Gliese 570 A is an orange-red dwarf
star, like Epsilon Eridani at left
center of meteor. (See a Digitized
Sky Survey image of Gl 570
(HR 5568) from the Nearby Stars Database.)

According to the new Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binaries, Star A and the close binary pair BC have a wide average separation of about 190 AUs (semi-major axis of 32.34"), moving in an eccentric orbit (e= 0.20) that lasts some 2,130 years and is inclined from the perspective of an observer on Earth at 72.53° (Alan Hale, 1994, pp. 312, 314, and 317; and Duquennoy and Mayor, 1988). The triple star system is said to exhibit moderate chromospheric activity (Duquennoy and Mayor, 1988). It has a galactic motion (eccentricity of 0.195 and inclination of sin i = 0.553) that is consistent with an assignation to the old disk population (Augensen and Buscombe, 1978; and Glenn J. Veeder, 1974).

Star A's late spectral type and dim luminosity puts it possibly close to the lower limit of habitability for (multicellular) Earth-type plant and animal life, given the redness of its light and the increased risk of tidal locking from the closeness of the orbit necessary for liquid water on a planetary surface. The distance from Star A where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is centered around 0.40 AU -- within the orbital distance of Mercury in the Solar System. At that distance from the star, such a planet would have an orbital period of 104 days, or less than a third of an Earth year.

Astronomers are hoping to use NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and the ESA's Darwin planned groups of observatories to search for a rocky inner planet in the so-called "habitable zone" (HZ) around Gliese 570 A. As currently planned, the TPF will include two complementary observatory groups: a visible-light coronagraph to launch around 2014; and a "formation-flying" infrared interferometer to launch before 2020, while Darwin will launch a flotilla of three mid-infrared telescopes and a fourth communications hub beginning in 2015.

Gliese 570 B

This is a red dwarf of spectral and luminosity type M1 V. It has about 55 percent of Sol's mass (RECONS), perhaps less than 65 percent of its diameter, and 1.9 percent of its brightness. The star is a double-lined spectroscopic binary. Speckle interferometry resolved that Star B has a stellar companion "C" (with a possible mass ratio of 0.71 +/- 0.02) (Duquennoy and Mayor, 1988).

NASA -- larger image

Gliese 570 B and C are dim red dwarf stars, like
Gliese 623 A (M2.5V) and B (M5.8Ve) at lower right.

According to the new Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binaries, the B and C pair of stars have an average separation around 0.79 AUs (semi-major axis of 0.133" at a distance of 19.26 ly) in a highly eccentric orbit (e= 0.765) lasting about 309 days with an inclination from the perspective of an observer on Earth of about 110° (Dmitri Pourbaix, 2000; and Duquennoy and Mayor, 1988). For Star B, the water zone orbit lies near 0.14 AU. Assuming that Star C does not perturb its orbital stability, a planet in Star B's water zone would have a period of about 25 days. However, tidal locking of such a closely orbiting planet would resulting in perpetual day on one side and perpetual night on the other. Some alternative useful star catalogue numbers for the star are: HR 5568 B, Gl 570 B, Hip 73182, HD 131976, BD-20 4123, SAO 183039, Vys or McC 726 B, LHS 386, LTT 5948, LFT 1160, LPM 550, and ADS 9446 B.

Gliese 570 C

A rather dim red dwarf, Star C is of spectral and luminosity type M3 V, with only about 35 percent of Sol's mass (RECONS) and slightly over 0.3 percent of its visual luminosity. It appears to have a high rotational velocity (Duquennoy and Mayor, 1988). Some alternative useful star catalogue numbers for the star are: HR 5568 C, Gl 570 C, HD 131976 B, BD-20 4123 B, SAO 183039 B, Vys or McC 726 C, and LHS 386 B, and ADS 9446 C.

For Star C, the water zone orbit lies near 0.056 AU. Assuming that Star B does not perturb its orbital stability, a planet in Star C's water zone would have a period of about 8.2 days. However, tidal locking of such a closely orbiting planet would resulting in perpetual day on one side and perpetual night on the other. (See an animation of the orbits of Stars A, B, and C and their potentially habitable zones, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)

Gliese 570 d

On January 15, 2000, astronomers at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California (including Adam Burgasser and Davy Kirkpatrick) announced that they had found one of the coolest brown dwarfs then known around Gliese ABC. The object was observed at a wide separation of more than 1,500 AUs (258.3"+/-0.4" at 19.26 ly) from the triple star system. It has an estimated mass of 50 +/- 20 Jupiters (see Burgasser et al, 2000; press release; and more graphics).

IPAC (2MASS Atlas Image Gallery)

Gliese 570 d is a cool methane brown
dwarf -- larger and boxed field images.

Atlas Image mosaic obtained as part of the
Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint
project of the University of Massachusetts
and the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center/California Institute of Technology,
funded by the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration and the National
Science Foundation.

The status of object "d" as a methane brown dwarf was confirmed by taking its spectral fingerprint with the 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. Found as one of 12 objects discovered since 1995 in the 2-Micron All Sky Survey (a collaborative project between IPAC and the University of Massachusetts known as 2MASS), the surface temperature of this substellar object was found to be a relatively cool 900° F (500° C), compared with Sol's 10,000° F (5,500°C). Gliese 570 d is significantly cooler (by 160° K) and less luminous than any other known brown dwarf, including the prototype "T" dwarf, Gliese 229 b. Classed as T7-8 V, it is estimated to be between two and five billion years old (Geballe et al, 2001).

Robert Hurt, SSC,
JPL, CalTech, NASA


Larger and jumbo illustrations.


Type-T, methane brown
dwarfs are the coolest
and smallest (more).

About 15 of the methane brown, or "T" dwarfs, had been discovered by early 2000. David Golimowski, a co-discoverer of the first methane brown dwarf, Gliese 229 b, recently speculated that such cool, dim objects could be as plentiful as the stars found in Sol's neighborhood -- as many as "one for every star." 2MASS astronomers believe that there may be twice as many brown dwarfs (L and T types) as stars in the Milky Way galaxy but that they may sum to only 15 percent of its stellar mass.

Hunt for Planetary Companions

No gas giant or smaller planets have been detected in this triple star system thus far. Astronomers would find it very difficult to detect Earth-type planets around these stars using present methods.

Brown Dwarfs or Planets?

When brown dwarfs were just a theoretical concern, astronomers differentiated those hypothetical objects from planets by how they were formed. If a substellar object was formed the way a star does, from a collapsing cloud of interstellar gas and dust, then it would be called a brown dwarf. If it was formed by gradually accumulating gas and dust inside a star's circumstellar disk, however, it was called a planet. Once the first brown dwarf candidates were actually found, however, astronomers realized that it was actually quite difficult to definitely rule on the validity of competing hypotheses about how a substellar object was actually formed without having been there. This problem is particularly difficult to resolve in the case of stellar companions, objects that orbit a star -- or two.