New Earth-Sized Planet Found Orbiting Ultra-Cool Star: Are We Closer to Finding Another Earth?
A team of astronomers has found a new Earth-sized planet about 55 light years away, orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf star. Named SPECULOOS-3 b, it completes an orbit around its star in about 17 hours. This star is more than twice as cold as our sun, and it’s ten times less massive and a hundred times less luminous.
Days and nights on SPECULOOS-3 b are likely endless due to its probable tidal locking, similar to our moon and Earth.
Published in Nature Astronomy, the discovery was made by the SPECULOOS project, led by the University of Liège, Belgium, along with partners from the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Bern, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SPECULOOS (Search for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) aims to find exoplanets orbiting ultra-cool dwarf stars using a network of robotic telescopes worldwide.
Ultra-cool dwarf stars are common, constituting about 70% of the stars in the Milky Way. However, they’re faint and scattered, requiring observations from telescopes over several weeks to detect transiting planets.
“We designed SPECULOOS specifically to observe nearby ultracool dwarf stars in search of rocky planets that lend themselves well to detailed studies,” says Michaël Gillon, astronomer at the University of Liège and lead author. “In 2017, our SPECULOOS prototype using the TRAPPIST telescope discovered the famous TRAPPIST-1 system, which includes seven Earth-sized planets, some potentially habitable.”
Most observations for this discovery were made by SPECULOOS telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere, with some contributions from the University of Birmingham at the SPECULOOS South Observatory in Chile.
Amaury Triaud, Professor of Exoplanetology at the University of Birmingham, states, “The discovery of SPECULOOS-3 shows our worldwide network functions well and is ready to detect more rocky worlds orbiting very low mass stars.”
Ultra-cool dwarf stars, cooler and smaller than our sun, have lifespans over a hundred times longer, potentially offering opportunities for life on orbiting planets.
Although astronomical data is typically analyzed automatically, in this case, the SPECULOOS team manually reviewed the data and Dr. Georgina Dransfield, a former Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham, noticed the planetary signal.
“The small size of ultra-cool dwarfs makes it easier to detect small planets,” Dransfield explains. “SPECULOOS-3b is special because its stellar and planetary properties make it an optimal target for JWST, capable of providing information about the composition of its surface.”
Future steps for the project may include follow-up observations by the James Webb Space Telescope to gain insights into the planet’s surface mineralogy and potential atmosphere.
Source: New Earth-Sized Planet Found Orbiting Ultra-Cool Star: Are We Closer to Finding Another Earth?
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