Two Super-Earths Orbiting Nearby Stars: What Secrets Do They Hold?
Astronomers have discovered two new super-Earth exoplanets, designated TOI-6002 b and TOI-5713 b, orbiting nearby M-dwarf stars. These exoplanets, identified using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), are about twice the size of Earth. The findings were detailed in a paper published on August 1 on the pre-print server arXiv.
TESS is surveying around 200,000 of the brightest stars near the Sun to search for transiting exoplanets. To date, TESS has identified over 7,200 candidate exoplanets, known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOI), with 543 of them confirmed.
An international team of astronomers led by Mourad Ghachoui from the University of Liège in Belgium confirmed the existence of these two new planets. The team detected transit signals in the light curves of the M dwarfs TOI-6002 and TOI-5713, indicating the presence of planets.
The researchers utilized TESS observations, ground-based photometry, high-angular resolution imaging, and spectroscopic data to confirm the planetary nature of these signals. They jointly analyzed the transit light curves from TESS and ground-based facilities to characterize the planets.
TOI-6002 b has a radius of 1.65 Earth radii and is estimated to be nearly four times more massive than Earth. It orbits its host star every 10.9 days at a distance of approximately 0.06 AU, with an equilibrium temperature of 321.1 K.
TOI-5713 b, about 77% larger than Earth, has an estimated mass of 4.3 Earth masses. It has an orbital period of 10.44 days and is separated from its parent star by 0.06 AU. The equilibrium temperature of TOI-5713 b is estimated to be 347.2 K.
Both planets are classified as super-Earths, a category that refers to planets more massive than Earth but not exceeding the mass of Neptune. Although the term primarily refers to mass, it is also used to describe planets larger than Earth but smaller than mini-Neptunes (with a radius between two to four Earth radii).
The composition of the two planets remains uncertain; they could be either rocky or water-rich worlds. Interestingly, both TOI-6002 b and TOI-5713 b are located just outside, but near, the inner edge of the habitable zone around their host stars. This positioning makes them intriguing targets for future studies, which could explore the evolution of exoplanets from potentially habitable to Venus-like conditions.
Source: Two Super-Earths Orbiting Nearby Stars: What Secrets Do They Hold?
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