Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers discovered a habitable zone planet orbiting nearby red dwarf star TOI-715 every 19.3 days and characterized its characteristics. I made it clear. They also demonstrated that a second, smaller exoplanet with a period of 25.6 days may exist, located just inside the outer edge of TOI-715’s habitable zone. This system represents the first of his TESS discoveries to fall within this most conservative and widely applicable habitable zone.
TOI-715 is an M dwarf star of spectral type M4 located approximately 137 light-years away in the constellation Urae.
The star, also known as TIC 271971130, is about 6.6 billion years old, making it older than the Sun.
TOI-715 includes the super-Earth exoplanet TOI-715b and the smaller terrestrial exoplanet candidate TOI-715c.
“TOI-715b is about 1.5 times wider than Earth and orbits within the habitable zone around its parent star,” said Georgina Dransfield, an astronomer at the University of Birmingham.
“This is the distance from the star that can give the planet the right temperature for liquid water to form on its surface.”
“Of course, for surface water to exist, several other factors have to be in place, especially for us to have a suitable atmosphere.”
“However, the conservative habitable zone (which may be narrower and more robustly defined than the broader ‘optimistic’ habitable zone) is a It ranks first.”
“A smaller planet, TOI-715c, may be only slightly larger than Earth and may exist just inside the conservative habitable zone.”
“TOI-175b joins the list of habitable zone planets that could be scrutinized more closely by Webb, perhaps also for atmospheric signatures,” the astronomers said.
“A lot depends on other properties of the planet, such as how heavy it is and whether it can be classified as a water world. Its atmosphere, if any at all, is more massive, denser, and has an atmosphere. It’s less pronounced than the atmosphere, and much less difficult to detect. Drier worlds are likely to keep their inconspicuous atmospheres close to the surface.”
“If the possibility of a second Earth-sized planet in this system is confirmed, it would be the smallest habitable zone planet ever discovered by TESS.”
“This discovery also exceeds TESS’s initial expectations by discovering an Earth-sized world within the habitable zone.”
This finding is reported in the following article: paper inside Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
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Georgina Dransfield other. 2024. Earth's habitable zone planet hosted by the M4 star TOI-715 near the ecliptic south pole. MNRAS 527 (1): 35-52; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad1439
Source: www.sci.news
