GJ 1061 is a small, old red dwarf twelve light-years away with three planets packed into orbits shorter than a fortnight. The outermost, GJ 1061 d, receives about as much starlight as Mars gets from the Sun - which places it inside the conservative habitable zone.
Fly there in 3DAll three planets orbit closer to their star than Mercury does to the Sun, yet the outer one is a temperate world. That is what a star radiating 0.17% of the Sun’s output does to the geometry: the habitable zone moves in to a few hundredths of an AU.
| Spectral type | M5.5 V |
| Surface temperature | 2,953 K |
| Mass | 0.12 solar masses |
| Radius | 0.156 solar radii |
| Luminosity | 0.0017 times the Sun |
| Apparent magnitude | 13.07 |
| Age | about 7 billion years |
| Distance from the Sun | 12.0 light-years (3.7 parsecs) |
| Position (J2000) | RA 53.9988°, Dec -44.5127° |
| Constellation | Horologium |
| Planet | Year | Orbit | Radius | Mass | Found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GJ 1061 b | 3.21 days | 0.0210 AU | 1.04 R⊕ estimated | 1.11 M⊕ | Radial Velocity, 2020 |
| GJ 1061 c | 6.68 days | 0.0342 AU | 1.19 R⊕ estimated | 1.81 M⊕ | Radial Velocity, 2020 |
| GJ 1061 d | 13.1 days | 0.0540 AU | 1.16 R⊕ estimated | 1.67 M⊕ | Radial Velocity, 2020 |
Values are the NASA Exoplanet Archive’s composite parameters. A radius marked estimated comes from a mass–radius relation; a mass marked minimum is M sin i. Planet sizes and colours in the 3D view are renderings: none of these worlds has been photographed as more than a point of light.
For a star of 2,953 K, 0.0017 times as bright as the Sun, the habitable zone, where starlight could keep water liquid on a rocky surface, runs from about 0.043 to 0.086 AU. 1 of its 3 known planets orbits inside it. The zone says how much starlight arrives, not whether a planet has water or air. The edges follow Kopparapu et al. (2014), as the 3D view draws them.
The light you see left 12 years ago, within living memory.