Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

Thanks, HOTPE. Barnard's star is infamous, not because it's the closest star but due to its high proper motion, which means we've known it's close for decades even though it's faint. M-dwarfs are the most common stars in the Galaxy. They are smaller and cooler than our sun and have been targets for habitable exoplanet searches for some time, mainly because it's much easier to detect objects orbiting smaller and less bright stars. For those interested, there's a Nature article from 2023 that goes into the subject. It's worth a read. Note that our sun is a G-type star (hotter and more massive than M-dwarfs) which may help understand the first diagram in the article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37487-9