This is

CVS I on the World Hotel Mars episode and I'm John Bachelor and David Livingston

Dr Space himself is here as my colleague and co-host and co-pilot.

We're headed to 55 light years away.

A red dwarf star named Speculous, believe it or not, that's a cookie.

However, it's also a star and we welcome Dr. Steve Howell of the NASA Ames Research Center

to help us understand Speculous and its planets surrounding Speculous, one in particular.

Steve is the author most recently of Kepler's cowboy, a science fiction novel.

However, right now we're going to an actual son, a red dwarf, that has a planet of great interest

to astronomers.

Steve, a very good evening to you, thank you for this.

What is a red dwarf?

Why are there so many of them?

What do we need to know about them before we get to a planet of the red dwarf?

Good evening to you.

Yes, good evening, John.

Hello, David.

So Red Dwarf Stars are very small stars.

They're about the size of our planet Jupiter.

And the reason they're so important for us and in studies of

finding other planets is that other planets orbit these stars in very short

orbital periods for example the star we're talking about orbits at star every 17 days.

...