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Spotted by a NASA mission An Earth-sized exoplanet orbits a small star about 100 light-years away.
The planet, named TOI 700, is probably rocky and 95% the size of our world. The celestial body is the fourth planet to be discovered orbiting a small, cool M dwarf star TOI 700. All in exoplanets They were discovered by NASA’s Exoplanet Survey Satellite or TESS mission.
Another planet in the system, discovered in 2020 and named TOI 700 d, is also the size of Earth. Both of these exoplanets are in the habitable zone of a star, or just the distance from a star where liquid water could potentially exist on its surface. The potential for liquid water suggests that the planets themselves are or have been habitable for life.
The discovery of the fourth planet Mars was announced at the 241st meeting of the Astronomical Society in Seattle, and the study of the exoplanet has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Astrophysical Letters.
“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable planets that we know of,” said study lead author Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.
“This makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional followers. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the calculation also shows how additional TESS observations are helping us find smaller and smaller worlds.
Small, cool M dwarf stars like TOI 700 are common in the universe, and many have been discovered to host exoplanets in recent years, such as the TRAPPIST-1 system and its seven exoplanets that will be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The nearest star is TOI 700 b, which is 90% the size of Earth and completes one rapid orbit around the star every 10 Earth days. Then there’s TOI 700 c, which is 2.5 times larger than our planet and completes one orbit around the star every 16 days. These planets are likely locked in such a way that they always show the same side of the star — much like how the same side of the moon always looks at Earth.
The two exoplanets in the star’s habitable zone, planets d and e, have longer orbits of 37 days and 28 days, respectively, because they are slightly further away from the star. The newly announced planet e is actually between planets c and d.
The TESS mission, launched in 2018, will monitor large parts of the night sky for 27 days at a time, looking at the brightest stars and recording their changes in brightness. These dips in luminosity mean planets orbiting in front of passing stars, which are called transits. The mission began observing the southern sky in 2018, then turned to the northern sky. In 2020, the mission was refueled in the southern sky again for additional observations, revealing the fourth planet in the TOI 700 system.
“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we could spot the TOI 700 data from the first year of TESS,” said study coauthor Ben Hord, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College. Park, and graduates researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “But the signal was so faint that an additional year of transit observations would be needed to identify it.”
While researchers use other space and ground-based observatories to conduct observations of planetary system engineering, many are pouring in TESS data.
“TESS has just completed its year of observations of the northern sky,” said Allison Youngblood, research astrophysicist and TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We look forward to other exciting discoveries in the mission’s hidden treasure trove of information.”
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