New “Super-Earth” Orbiting M Dwarf Star Discovered
An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of a new “super-Earth” exoplanet by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), dubbed TOI-1680b, which is approximately 50% larger than Earth and orbiting an M dwarf star about 120 light years away. The discovery is detailed in a paper published July 11 on the preprint server arXiv.
TESS aims to search for exoplanets by surveying about 200,000 of the brightest stars in the solar neighborhood. So far, it has identified about 6,700 exoplanet candidates (TESS Objects of Interest, TOI), of which 363 have been confirmed.
A group of astronomers led by Mourad Ghachoui of the University of Liège, Belgium, identified another TOI monitored by TESS in a recent research paper.Ghachoui and his colleagues identified the magnitude curve of an inactive M dwarf known as TOI-1680 They report that a transit signal was identified in the The planetary nature of this signal was confirmed by ground-based tracking photometry, high-resolution imaging, and spectroscopic observations.
Source: New “Super-Earth” Orbiting M Dwarf Star Discovered
Two ‘super-Earth’ planets – one of which could host the necessary conditions for life – have been discovered orbiting a star 100 light-years away.
The star, LP 890-9, hosts two exoplanets named LP 890-9b and LP 890-9c, the former of which was first picked up by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
It was characterised using the SPECULOOS telescopes, one of which is operated at the University of Birmingham, which then identified the other planet.
LP 890-9b, is about 30 per cent larger than Earth and completes an orbit around the star in just 2.7 days.
However LP 890-9c is about 40 per cent larger than Earth and has a longer orbital period of about 8.5 days – placing it in the ‘habitable zone’ around its star.