  The USNO ground-based astrometric program URAT-Bright in combination with the
Hipparcos mission epoch astrometry provides precise proper motions of a
thousand bright stars in the southern hemisphere on a time basis of about 25
years. Small but statistically significant differences between these proper
motions and Gaia EDR3 data can reveal long-period exoplanets similar to Jupiter
in the nearest star systems. The presence of such a planet orbiting the
magnetically active dwarf $\epsilon$ Eri is confirmed from both
URAT--Hipparcos--EDR3 data and Hipparcos--EDR3 data with a corresponding
projected velocity of $(+5,+8)$ and $(+6,+13)$ m s$^{-1}$, respectively. These
signals are formally significant at a 0.989 and 1.0 confidence. We conclude
that the newest astrometric results confirm the existence of a long-period
exoplanet orbiting $\epsilon$ Eri, which was marginally detected from precision
radial velocity measurements some 20 years ago.
