In this topic I am going to babble about the Red Dwarf Star Gliese 876, which is host to 3 exo- planets. Since Gliese 876 is a red dwarf star, that means that it is a fairly cool for a star, burning at about 3500K, and it is guessed to have only 32% of the mass our sun has. Since it is one of the tinier stars out there Gliese 876 cannot be seen with the naked eye, you would need the aid of a telescope to view it. Hovering around in the constellation of Aquarius, Gliese 876 is about 15 light years (or about 4 and a half parsecs) away from our sun. We would've never thought that such a tiny star would harness habitable extrasolar-planets about fifteen years ago.

In 1998 two exo-planet teams, one which was led by the famous exoplanet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, had found that there is a extrasolar-planet orbiting around Gliese 876. The planet was named Gliese 876b, and it was discovered by measuring the radial velocity of the star, as the planets strong gravity would pull on its parent star causing it to wobble. Gliese 876 is guessed to have 2 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits its parent star closer then Mercury does to our Sun, taking it about 61 days to complete a full orbit.

The next extrasolar planet that was found orbiting around Gliese 876 was discovered just 3 years later in 2001. Gliese 876C was found to be orbiting Gliese even closer then Gliese 876B, taking it about 30 days to complete a full orbit around its parent star. This must cause a huge gravitational battle when the the giant planets align up next to each other. Gliese 876C has a little more than half the mass of Jupiter. In 2005 a third extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting the red dwarf Gliese, named Gliese 876 d. Gliese 876 d is just barely inside of what we call a stars habitable zone, we believe, and it has about 6-7 times the mass of Earth, we think this might be a terrestrial planet. It takes Gliese 876 d about two days to complete a full orbit its parent star. The sunrise on Gliese 876 must be lethal considering how close its orbit is to its star.

So the two gas giants orbit the red dwarf in the so called habitable zone, because these are gas giants it is very unlikely for them to harbor life. But what about the large moons of Gliese B and C ?(if there are any) There could be a moon orbiting Gliese b that could be pretty close to the size of Earth. If all the conditions were right, where it's just cool enough to have water, life could very well be possible. We might even find some more extrasolar planets orbiting Gliese 876 in the future. Time and better viewing instruments will only tell if there is a extrasolar planet maintaining life in the Gliese 876 solar system.