This episode's coordinates point to a star that goes by many names, including HD 217987 and Lacaille 9352, but, for whatever reason, professional astronomers like to call it GJ 887, where the G and J refer to Wilhelm Gliese and Hartmut Jahreiss, two astronomers who listed this star in one of their many catalogs [1]. GJ 887 lies in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, or the southern fish, which doesn't really have much of anything in common with the constellation Pisces in the zodiac except that both seemed connected to myths (albeit different myths) involving the Euphrates River [2].
So, first of all, GJ 887 is a red dwarf with a mass of 0.49 times the mass of the Sun and a diameter of 0.47 times the diameter of the Sun [3]. So GJ 887 could sort of be thought of as half a Sun (except in volume, or surface temperature I suppose). Also, the total amount of light emitted by the star is only 0.037 times the light emitted by the Sun, which is much less than one-half [3].
Anyway, GJ 887 is very close to Earth. The distance to the star has been measured to the very precise value of 10.724 light years (3.288 pc) [4, 5]. This makes it the twelvth closest star system to our own [6, 7, 8] and also means that I can definitely use my Star Wars sound effects.
The star also has the very interesting distinction of being the brightest red dwarf in the sky [3], which is a distinction akin to identifying the world's largest dachshund or the world's longest inchworm. However, the star has a magnitude of about 7.4 [9], which is a couple of magnitudes fainter than what can be seen without a telescope. If you want to see GJ 887 using a telescope, I don't really have any good recommendations on how to find it except to point at the star's coordinates.
While GJ 887 might sound interesting enough just for being a really really close red dwarf, what is especially exciting about this star system is that, in 2020, a group of astronomers led by Sandra Jeffers published a paper announcing the discovery of two exoplanets orbiting the star [3]. These planets were found by measuring the slight periodic Doppler shifting in the star's light caused by the gravitational tug of the exoplanets orbiting them. Both of these exoplanets have been described as super-Earths, which would sound like the type of place Superman would come from (especially since Superman came from a planet with a red star), but which actually means that the planets are just rocky planets that are several times the mass of the Earth.
The inner planet, designated GJ 887b, has a mass of 4.2 times the mass of the Earth [3]. It's positioned at a distance of 0.068 AU from the star (where 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun), it completes an orbit about once every 9.3 days, and it has an estimated average surface temperature of 195 degrees Celsius [3]. For people looking for extraterrestrial life, this planet is a bit too warm, at least for something resembling life on Earth.
The outer planet, designated GJ 887c, is a bit more promising. It has a mass of 7.6 times the mass of the Earth, orbits GJ 887 at a distance of 0.120 AU about once every 21.8 days, and has an estimated average surface temperature of 79 Celsius [3]. This would be a bit warm compared to the Earth, but I quite honestly suspect that the poles of the planet might comparable to the Earth's surface in terms of temperature.
It's also possible that the star system has a third exoplanet, which would be named GJ 887d, but the existence of this exoplanet has not been confirmed yet. If it is real, it would have a mass of 8.3 times the Earth's mass and would orbit at a distance of 0.21 AU once every 50.7 days [3]. This would definitely place the planet within the habitable zone of the star system, or the place where liquid water and Earth-like conditions are possible.
So GJ 887 actually looks like an awesome exoplanetary system. It has two confirmed and a potential third exoplanet, one of the confirmed exoplanets is at the edge of the habitable zone, the possible third exoplanet would be within the habitable zone, and as a bonus, the system is really close to Earth, making it possible to study the exoplanets in detail.
It even initially looked like GJ 887 was an unusually inactive red dwarf. Many other red dwarfs exhibit a lot of flaring, and these flares would tend to bake away the atmospheres of any exoplanets orbiting the stars. However, long-term monitoring of GJ 887 in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum showed that its brightness varied very little, implying that it did not exhibit the type of flaring seen from other red dwarfs, which would make its exoplanets even more likely to harbor life [3]. Unfortunately, relatively brief ultraviolet observations of GJ 887 demonstated that the star does exhibit a lot of flaring; the flares just aren't seen at visible wavelengths [10]. This throws a wet ultraviolet-colored blanket over the enthusiasm for identifying extraterrestrial life in the GJ 887 system, but I still think it's worth studying the system in much more detail.