“To explore strange, new worlds…”

I’ve been hoping for this news for a long, long time: Astronomers have found a planet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A. The planet looks to be a super-Earth, bigger and more massive than Earth, but still possibly terrestrial (that is, a metal/rock body like Earth as opposed to a gas giant like Neptune or Jupiter).

Why is this a big deal? Because 40 Eridani A is, canonically, the star around which the planet Vulcan orbits. Yes, Vulcan: Spock’s home world in Star Trek!

As an astronomer and a bona fide Trek nerd, my heart is singing with glee.

The star system 40 Eri is about 16.4 light years from Earth, making it one of the closest stars in the sky. It’s actually a triple star: The brightest or primary star is 40 Eri A, and is a star like the Sun, though smaller and cooler (for technical nerds, it’s a K0.5V star, so an orange dwarf). Still, due to its proximity, it’s easily visible to the naked eye from a dark site, shining at magnitude 4.4. It has the proper name Keid, and I’ll use that from here on out to avoid confusion with the other stars.

It’s orbited pretty far out by a binary pair, one of which is a red dwarf (much smaller, cooler, and dimmer than the Sun) and the other a white dwarf — what was once a star like the Sun but ran out of fuel, puffed up into a red giant, lost its outer layers, and essentially died, leaving behind the glowing dense core of the star. The white dwarf is called 40 Eri B and the red dwarf 40 Eri C. They orbit each other every 250 years or so. They lie about 60 billion kilometers from Keid, and take about 8,000 years to orbit it.

Zoom In The location in the sky of Keid, also known as 40 Eridani, the star that hosts the planet Vulcan in Star Trek. It's up in the winter near Orion, and is easily visible to the naked eye. Credit: Sky Safari

So how was the planet orbiting Keid found? Astronomers with the Dharma Planet Survey are intensely scrutinizing about 150 nearby stars that are like the Sun in size and temperature (again, for the nerds: F through M stars) to look for planets orbiting close in to their host stars. Unlike observatories like Kepler and TESS that look for transits of exoplanets, the DPS is looking for the gravitational signature of planets.

A planet orbits a star due to the star’s gravity. But a planet has gravity too! It may be much smaller than the star’s, but it’s there. So in reality the star and planet both orbit their center of mass, called the barycenter. In general we can’t physically see that motion of the star, since the circle is very teeny and the star very far away.

But we can still detect it. As the star makes its orbit around the barycenter, it is sometimes moving toward us and sometimes away, so we see a Doppler shift in its spectrum. The size of this shift depends on the mass of the planet (which determines its gravitational effect on the star), and the time it takes the star to make one orbit is the period (the year) of the planet.

Two objects of different masses orbit each other; the more massive one makes a little circle and the lower mass one a bigger circle. Credit: NASA/Spaceplace

These measurements are fiendishly difficult to make, and require incredible precision. They also require “high cadence”; that is, a lot of measurements made very often. The DPS is doing that, looking at it target stars every night for at least 30 clear nights in a row, and then at least 70 more observations over the next 420 days. This provides more than enough data to look for planets on tight orbits.

And this is where things get fun. The DPS astronomers found a clear 42.4 day signal in Keid’s motion. This indicates the star is orbited by a planet (which would be called Keid b, or 40 Eri Ab… or, y’know, Vulcan) with a mass of about 8.4 times Earth’s (at a minimum; it could be more). This puts it almost exactly between Earth and Neptune in mass — Neptune’s mass is 17 times Earth’s. This makes it either what we call a super-Earth or a mini-Neptune.

The velocity of 40 Eri A (vertical axis in meters per second) as the planet orbits it over time (horizontal axis, normalized to 1 = the period of the planet, about 42 days). You can see the velocity go up and down (away and toward us) as the star makes a circle around the system's barycenter. The different colors represent data from different observatories. Credit: Ma et al.

So is it a rocky world like ours or a gas giant? That’s not possible to tell right now, unfortunately. What we need is its density (how much mass is crammed into its volume), which means we need to know how big it is, and that’s not possible to determine with the current observations.

That’s important. For example, Earth is mostly metal (like iron and nickel) and rock. The overall density is about 5.5 times that of water (or 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter). Neptune is mostly gas, and has a density of only 1.6. So pretty obviously, getting this planet’s density would tell us a lot about it. The density could be found if it transits Keid, blocking a bit of the star’s light. That telltale dip would give us the diameter of the planet, and therefore its volume. But these DPS observations don’t tell us if it transits or not.

Zoom In Artowrk depicting a super-Earth orbiting an orange dwarf star. Credit: ESO/Spaceengine.org

The good news? TESS is an orbiting NASA observatory dedicated to looking for exoplanet transits, and Keid is in its list of targets! From what I can see TESS will be pointed in Keid’s direction starting in November of 2018, so we may find out more about this planet in early 2019.

That’s exciting! If it does transit, then we get its diameter (assuming TESS can see such a small dip in the star’s light). If it has the same density as Earth, then it would have to be about twice Earth’s diameter to get a mass of 8.4 times ours. In that case, the surface gravity would be about twice ours too. That means you’d weigh twice as much on the planet as you do on Earth.

Huh. In Trek it’s known that Vulcan is a high-gravity world (which is why Spock is stronger than humans). It’s also known to be hot there, and this planet, if it exists, is close enough to its star to be much warmer than Earth (maybe too warm; it’s actually near the inner edge of the star’s habitable zone). Also, interestingly, the star is probably about 7 billion years old so, older than our Sun (at 4.6 billion), so plenty of time for life to get started there (presumably by the Progenitors) and to evolve.

Now I have to throw in some caveats. Besides the idea that this might be more like Neptune than Earth, it’s not 100% certain the planet even exists. It turns out the star itself rotates once every 40 or so days. That’s very close to the period detected for the planet’s orbit, which is a little suspicious. Like the Sun, Keid has a magnetic cycle (it lasts about 10 years, close to the Sun’s 11-year cycle too), so it has sunspots (well, starspots) on it. As the star rotates that could mimic the signal seen by DPS.

The astronomers did everything they could to make sure this was a planet and not some activity on the star’s surface, and to be honest I think they did a good job. It’s far more likely to be a planet than a bunch of starspots, but we can’t be 100% sure. So it’s best to keep that in mind*.

Still, it’s bad enough Vulcan was destroyed in the J.J. Abrams reboot of Trek in 2009. Having it never have existed at all would be worse.

But, all in all, this is pretty cool news. And mind you, there could be other planets orbiting the star, and one as small as Earth and orbiting farther out (and therefore a bit more clement) wouldn’t be detected easily in this survey.

We’re just getting started finding these strange new worlds. Our methods and technology get better all the time. This new discovery makes me hopeful that we’ll boldly find planets no one has found before.

Zoom In Let's go! Credit: Paramount Pictures

P.S. I have to add, the lead author on the paper is named Bo Ma, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida. As it happens, Samual Boma was a character in Star Trek, appearing in the original series episode "The Galileo Seven." He was an astrophysicist (!), and one of the big sources of conflict in that episode was that he vehemently disagreed with many of Spock's command decisions. That makes me so happy. As I told you: I'm a huge Trek nerd.

* It’s worth noting that this same signal was seen in data from another observatory as well, but the authors note they couldn’t distinguish it from magnetic activity in the star at the time. The DPS data allows for more in-depth analysis of this.</s>If it has inhabitants, it's a good bet they all "live long and prosper."

The real-life planet Vulcan, once home to "Star Trek's" Spock (made famous by Leonard Nimoy), has been found, thanks to scientists who've discovered an exoplanet just 16 light-years from Earth.

The planet is associated with the real-life star 40 Eridani A, which has been found to be host to one planet. It is roughly twice the size of Earth (earning it the moniker of a "Super Earth) and orbits its star every 42 days, said astronomer Jian Ge, who led the study.



“Vulcan was connected to 40 Eridani A in the publications 'Star Trek 2' by James Blish (Bantam, 1968) and 'Star Trek Maps' by Jeff Maynard (Bantam, 1980),” explained astronomer George Henry in the statement.

Given the fact 40 Eridani A is slightly cooler and less massive than our Sun and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle (compared to 11.6 for our Sun), it could be an "ideal host star" for an advanced civilization, astronomer Matthew Muterspaugh noted.

“The new planet is a ‘super-Earth’ orbiting the star HD 26965, which is only 16 light years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another Sun-like star,” said Ge in a statement. “The planet is roughly twice the size of Earth and orbits its star with a 42-day period just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone.”

The 40 Eridani star system is comprised of three stars, with Vulcan orbiting the "primary" star and the two others are companion stars, which, according to a 1991 letter by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and several Harvard astrophysicists, “would gleam brilliantly in the Vulcan sky."

PLUTO SHOULD BE A PLANET AGAIN, RESEARCHERS ARGUE

40 Eridani A, also known as HD 26965, was discovered using the Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope (DEFT) and is the first “super-Earth” found by the Dharma Survey, the researchers noted.

"This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date," said University of Florida astronomer and lead author of the study Bo Ma, in a statement. "Now, anyone can see 40 Eridani A on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock's home."</s>A team of scientists spotted an exoplanet twice the size of the Earth as through the the Dharma Planet Survey (DPS) led by University of Florida astronomer Jian Ge. The “Super-Earth” orbits the HD 26965 system, commonly known as 40 Eridani – a triple star system, Vice reports.

The system consists of the orange dwarf Eridani A, which is much like our sun, as well as white dwarf Eridani B and red dwarf Eridani C. The newly spotted exoplanet orbits Eridani A – exactly the star “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry picked for the one more likely for Vulcan to orbit in a 1991 letter. Vulcan’s exactly location was never pinpointed in the original series of movies, but Roddenberry, in consultation with astronomers Sallie Baliunas, Robert Donahue, and George Nassiopoulos, declared that Eridani A seemed just about perfect.

“An intelligent civilization could have evolved over the eons on a planet circling 40 Eridani,” Roddenberry and the astronomers suggested in a 1991 letter to the editor published in Sky & Telescope, noting that three stars “would gleam brilliantly in the Vulcan sky.”

In a statement from University of Florida, Ge said that the exoplanet “is only 16 light-years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another sun-like star,” also noting that it orbits with a 42 day period “just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone,” meaning it is possible, in theory, for the planet to have liquid water on its surface.

“This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date,” said University of Florida astronomer Bo Ma, one of the study’s authors. “Now, anyone can see 40 Eridani A on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock's home."

Meanwhile, NASA’s TESS team, using a satellite launched by a SpaceX rocket in April, announced this week they had discovered two more exoplanets around the brightest stars near the Earth. One is another Super-Earth orbiting the star Pi Mensae, which is 60 light-years from Earth. The planet has triple the mass and 10 times the radius of Earth, yet reportedly it demonstrates a water-like density. The second planet is 49 light-years from Earth and orbits the M dwarf star LHS 3844. The TESS team called it a “hot Earth,” as it is slightly closer to its system’s star than our planet is to the sun.

“This find is being reviewed by other scientists, and we're looking forward to studying this cool ‘hot Earth,” the tweet concluded.

TESS is the first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey and will conduct a feat that NASA explained is impossible to accomplish using a ground-based survey: looking for candidate systems and exoplanets that could potentially become humanity’s new homeworld.</s>In the Star Trek universe, the beloved character Spock hails from the planet Vulcan. This planet is, of course, entirely fictional. However, Star Trek producers eventually associated Vulcan with a real star near Earth called 40 Eridani A. New observations have revealed a planet in orbit of 40 Eridani A — our very own real-life Vulcan. The presence of pointy-eared aliens with green blood is not yet confirmed.

Early in the existence of Star Trek, it didn’t matter much where exactly Vulcan was in the cosmos. All we needed to know was that it was close to Earth on a galactic scale. Later, the expanding of technical background details necessitated accurate connections to the real world. In 2002, an officially licensed book called Star Trek: Star Charts pointed to 40 Eridani A as the Vulcan system. These charts also showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise, which aired on TV around that time. That makes it canon in the Star Trek universe.

In real life, 40 Eridani A is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun, with an orange-ish color. At a distance of just 16 light years, you can look up in the sky and see 40 Eridani A without a telescope. The star is about the same age as the sun, and it has a similar pattern of sunspots. That could mean its solar system is conducive to life.

The planet is a so-called super-Earth with an estimated mass eight times that of our planet, which doesn’t match the fictional Vulcan as far as we know. The exoplanet is also orbiting very close to its star with a year of just 42 Earth days. 40 Eridani A is cooler than the sun, but astronomers still believe the exoplanet will fall outside of the habitable zone. Although, Vulcan itself was largely desert.

Astronomers with the Dharma Planet Survey detected the planet via the radial velocity method. That we can infer its presence from small wobbles in the star caused by the orbiting planet. It’s unclear if the unnamed exoplanet transits in front of its host star from our perspective. If so, we may be able to characterize its atmosphere and verify the physical characteristics.

A past study detected something strange with 40 Eridani A’s radial velocity, but that team was unable to verify a planet. The new study has additional data to makes its case. It’s still just a candidate planet, though. More observations are needed. I think we can all agree that we have to name the planet “Vulcan” if other studies verify its presence around 40 Eridani A.

Now read: How to Build a Star Trek: The Next Generation Mechanical Keyboard, Real-life tricorders are here 230 years early, courtesy of the Tricorder XPrize, and Scientists Say Closest Exoplanet Could Be Habitable After All</s>Astronomers announced the discovery of an exoplanet with 8.47 times Earth's mass and twice Earth's radius in the 40 Eridani star system, distant 17 light-years from our Sun. In the Star Trek universe, the Eridani constellation is mentioned as the star system where the planet Vulcan, homeworld of Commander Spock, is located.

NASA

In the original Star Trek series the location of Vulcan wasn't identified. Vulcan was mentioned as planet various times in the first season, but it was only in the the second season episode “Amok Time” that it was visited by Commander Spock, Captain Kirk and chief medical officer McCoy.

Vulcan was shown as an Earth-sized world, mostly covered by deserts and mountains, with a red sky glowing above a barren landscape. As it orbits its sun on a very narrow orbit, its surface temperatures are higher than Earth's. Also, the atmosphere is very thin, barely breathable, and non-Vulcans have a hard time adapting to the harsh environment. According to Star Trek lore, the desert-planet Vulcan orbits its sun together with the planet T´Khut, a geologically active lava planet.

In the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, released in 1982, the star 40 Eridani A was mentioned as Vulcan's sun. In 1991, Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, published a short article together with astrophysicists Baliunas, Donahue and Nassiopoulos, arguing that the constellation of Eridani would be the most fitting place for Vulcan.

The real 40 Eridani system is a triple star system, with Eridani A as its primary star accompanied by a red and a white dwarf star, named respectively Eridani B and Eridani C. Only Eridani A is stable enough to host a hypothetical habitable planet. Eridani B emits too much dangerous radiation and Eridani C is prone to flares, sudden eruptions of energy and matter emitting lethal doses of X-rays. As Eridani A is smaller than our Sun, its habitable zone (where a planet could exist with liquid water) is narrower.

JPL

Unlike the fictional planet Vulcan, the real exoplanet seems to be a Super-Earth or a small gas giant. According to the published preliminary results the planet orbits its star in just 39 to 40 Earth days, along the inner limit of the habitable zone.</s>Okay, so, Star Trek is science fiction. But sometimes the lines between sci fic and real astronomy blur, and that’s the case in this story. The (fictional) planet Vulcan – home world of the legendary Mr. Spock – was first connected to the (real) star 40 Eridani A in 1968, in the publication Star Trek 2 by James Blish. Among Star Trek fans, this star continued to be associated with Vulcan in the decades afterwards. Then, in 1991, Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry and three astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) confirmed in a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine that 40 Eridani A could indeed work as Vulcan’s host star. This month, a team of astronomers announced they’ve discovered a (real) planet for 40 Eridani A.

University of Florida astronomer Jian Ge, who led the discovery team, wrote in a statement:

The new planet is a super-Earth orbiting the star HD 26965 [aka 40 Eridani A], which is only 16 light-years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another sunlike star. The planet is roughly twice the size of Earth and orbits its star with a 42-day period just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone.

Astronomer Matthew Muterspaugh of Tennessee State University, a member of the discovery team, added that this orange-tinted star:

The newly found planet is the first super-Earth detected by the Dharma Planet Survey, which uses the 50-inch telescope atop Mt. Lemmon in southern Arizona. The survey’s goal is to look for possibly habitable planets around nearby stars.

The 40 Eridani star system is composed of three stars. The newly discovered planet orbits the primary star, and – as Roddenberry and the three CfA astronomers pointed out in their 1991 letter – the two companion stars:

Astronomer Bo Ma of the University of Florida is the first author of the new paper, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. He commented:

This star can be seen with the unaided eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date. Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock’s home.

Read more from SkyandTelescope.com: Super-Earth Discovered in (Fictional) Vulcan System This story gives a lot of background about why Roddenberry and the CfA astronomers confirmed 40 Eridani A as being a good candidate for Spock’s home star.

Bottom line: Astronomers have found a planet in the habitable zone of 40 Eridani A, which many Star Trek fans identified as the home star of Mr. Spock.

Source: The first super-Earth Detection from the High Cadence and High Radial Velocity Precision Dharma Planet Survey</s>Star Trek’s Spock comes from the planet Vulcan, which of course doesn’t exist. But new research might give us the next best thing—an exoplanet orbiting the real-life star that Vulcan is said to be orbiting in the Star Trek universe.

In 1991, Gene Roddenberry wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope about what kind of star the planet Vulcan was likely to orbit. In that letter, he specifically picks out one such star, 40 Eridani. Later, 40 Eridani became the canon Vulcan star system featured in a handful of episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.

In real life, 40 Eridani is a triple star system located about 17 light-years from the Earth. The main star, 40 Eridani A, is about 84 percent as massive as our sun. The other two stars in the system are much smaller and orbit 10 times as far away from the main star as Pluto orbits from the sun.

While 40 Eridani isn’t the largest or brightest star in the night sky, it is pretty close to us, making it a good target for scientists searching for planets around other stars. Recently, a group of scientists at the Fairborn Observatory working with the Dharma Planet Survey took a good look at 40 Eridani and discovered a planet circling it, just like Gene Roddenberry said it would.

The newly discovered planet probably doesn’t have logical residents with pointy ears. What we do know is that it is about twice the size of the Earth and orbits its host star once every 42 days. Such a short orbital period means that this planet is located very close to its star, making it hot and dry. In fact, it’s unlikely to have any kind of life living on it at all.

This also makes this newly-discovered planet the first ever found by the Dharma Planet Survey, which is designed to hunt planets around nearby stars. With any luck, this will only be the first of many.

Source: Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society via Space.com</s>Star Trek's planet Vulcan, ancestral home of Spock and his species, just became a little more real.

Real-life astronomers may have just discovered the real-life planet Vulcan, the homeworld of the Vulcan race from Star Trek and its most famous member, Spock.

A team of astronomers just announced they’ve discovered a (real) planet for 40 Eridani A.

The newly found planet is the first super-Earth detected by the Dharma Planet Survey, which uses the 50-inch telescope atop Mt. Lemmon in southern Arizona.

University of Florida astronomer Jian Ge, who led the discovery team, wrote in a statement: "The new planet is a super-Earth orbiting the star HD 26965 [aka 40 Eridani A], which is only 16 light-years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth orbiting another sunlike star.

"The planet is roughly twice the size of Earth and orbits its star with a 42-day period just inside the star’s optimal habitable zone.

Astronomer Matthew Muterspaugh of Tennessee State University, a member of the discovery team, added that this orange-tinted star "is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our sun, is approximately the same age as our sun, and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle nearly identical to the sun’s 11.6-year sunspot cycle."

Astronomer Bo Ma of the University of Florida is the first author of the new paper, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

He commented: "This star can be seen with the unaided eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date.

"Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock’s home."

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Search for jobs, motors and property, or place an advert or family notice here</s>In 1968, science fiction and fantasy author James Blish adapted a set of eight Star Trek: The Original Series episodes into a collection of short stories published under the title Star Trek 2. The collection included the Harlan Ellison story “The City on the Edge of Forever,” widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the original series. In one of the stories in Star Trek 2, Blish came up with a hypothetical location for planet Vulcan, home of the logical, pointy-eared Vulcans.

Blish’s chosen location for Vulcan was 40 Eridani, a triple star system in the constellation of Eridanus some just 16 light-years from our own Sun. In 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry admitted that the location had become part of the Star Trek canon. In a strange twist of life imitating art, astronomers have now found a planet exactly where Blish and Roddenbery said Vulcan was.

The research which led to the discovery of the real-life Vulcan was led by University of Florida astronomer Jian Ge. Jian and other astronomers have been monitoring around 150 nearby stars for planets as part of the Dharma Planet Survey, a search for rocky habitable planets. Using the DEFT Telescope in Arizona, Jian and colleagues found a super-Earth just 16 light-years away orbiting the star HD 26965 – the price location for Vulcan in the Star Trek canon.

One of the researchers who contributed to the discovery says that “HD 26965 may be an ideal host star for an advanced civilization” due to its size and distance from its host star. The University of Florida’s Bo Ma, lead author of the paper outlining the discovery, says that unlike most of the host stars of known exoplanets, “anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock’s home.”

Is it time to turn our search for extraterrestrial life into a search for Spock? Let’s hope not. The Search for Spock was terrible. I’m more of a Voyage Home fan.</s>So far, astronomers have identified thousands of exoplanets out there beyond the reaches of the Solar System, but only a rare few are the stuff of legend. Such is the case with an Earth-like exoplanet, found orbiting a star called 40 Eridani A - Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's preferred location for Vulcan, the home planet of Mr Spock.

Located around 16 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Eridanus, 40 Eridani A is part of a triple-star system. Although it was never mentioned in the original TV series of Star Trek, it had been put forward as a proposed location for the planet by related literature.

In 1991, Roddenberry and three astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine laying out their choice for Vulcan's location, and why.

"Star Trek 2 by James Blish and Star Trek Maps by Jeff Maynard and others name the star 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun. The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stan and Fred Goldstein cites Epsilon Eridani instead," they wrote in their letter.

"We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun because of what we have learned about both stars at Mount Wilson … The HK observations suggest that 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, about the same age as the Sun. In contrast, Epsilon Eridani is barely 1 billion years old.

"Based on the history of life on Earth, life on any planet around Epsilon Eridani would not have had time to evolve beyond the level of bacteria. On the other hand, an intelligent civilisation could have evolved over the aeons on a planet circling 40 Eridani. So the latter is the more likely Vulcan sun."

Epsilon Eridani does have one planet - an uninhabitable gas giant. Now astronomers on the University of Florida-led Dharma Planet Survey have found something that seems a bit more habitable orbiting 40 Eridani A.

More precisely, it's an object known as a super-Earth - a rocky planet around twice the size of Earth, orbiting 40 Eridani A just inside the system's habitable zone - not too hot and not too cold. It completes one orbit every 42 (Earth) days.

So life on the planet isn't unfeasible.

"The orange-tinted HD 26965 [40 Eridani A] is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our Sun, is approximately the same age as our Sun, and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle nearly identical to the Sun's 11.6-year sunspot cycle," said astronomer Matthew Muterspaugh of Tennessee State University.

"Therefore HD 26965 may be an ideal host star for an advanced civilisation."

The aim of the Dharma Planet Survey, using the 50-inch Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope (DEFT) on Mount Lemmon in Arizona, is a dedicated survey to find low-mass planets orbiting bright, nearby stars.

It uses the radial velocity method - detecting the very slight wobble in a star's position due to the gravitational pull of an exoplanet. The candidate exoplanet, named HD 26965b (but we'll probably call it Vulcan, obviously), is the first super-Earth found in the survey.

And if you're in the southern hemisphere, you can even go outside and look for it.

"This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date," said astronomer Bo Ma of the University of Florida.

"Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock's home."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Astronomers discover an exoplanet located in the 40 Eridani star system mentioned in the Star Trek series where the planet Vulcan is located.