Abstract
Despite the observational effort carried out in the last few decades, no perfect solar twin has been found to date. An important milestone was achieved a decade ago by Porto de Mello & da Silva, who showed that 18 Sco is almost a solar twin. In the present work, we use extremely high resolution (R = 105), high signal-to-noise ratio Keck HIRES spectra to carry out a differential analysis of 16 solar-twin candidates. We show that HD 98618 is the second-closest solar twin and that the fundamental parameters of both HD 98618 and 18 Sco are very similar (within a few percent) to the host star of our solar system, including the likelihood of hosting a terrestrial planet within their habitable zones. We suggest that these stars should be given top priority in exoplanet and SETI surveys.
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Footnotes
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The data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.