Gliese 687 is a quiet red dwarf in the northern constellation of Draco, a near neighbour of the Sun known to be circled by at least one planet.
At a glance
| type | red dwarf (class M) |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 14.8 light-years (4.55 pc) |
| its light left it | 14.8 years ago |
| luminosity | 0.0141 × the Sun |
| radius | 0.42 × the Sun |
| surface temperature | 3,410 K |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Gliese 687
Gliese 687 is a small, cool star burning hydrogen slowly in its core, like most of the stars around the Sun. It is far too faint to see without a telescope, even though it is one of the closer stars in the sky, and it lies in Draco, not far from the north celestial pole.
Its planet was found by the radial-velocity method: as the planet orbits, it tugs the star back and forth, and the star’s light shifts very slightly towards blue and then red. The signal points to a planet with roughly the mass of Neptune, in an orbit much tighter than Earth’s yet still cool because the star itself is so dim.
What you see in the piece
From Earth it is invisible to the eye in the piece, below the limit of what a person can see. Fly to it and it becomes a small orange-red disc, its colour set by its cool surface.
Questions
How far away is Gliese 687?
Gliese 687 is 14.8 light-years (4.55 pc) from the Sun, so the light leaving it now arrives 14.8 years from now.