A celestial body is located 55 light-years from the Sun
Around one of the small star systems, astronomers have discovered a completely new world: an Earth-sized exoplanet located just 55 light-years from the Sun. The exoplanet, in accordance with naming conventions, is called SPECULOOS-3b.
Astronomers have discovered a new Earth-sized planet orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star similar in size to Jupiter. The Guardian reports. This new extrasolar planet is called SPECULOOS-3b. Meanwhile, the dwarf star is two times cooler than our Sun, and also ten times less massive and a hundred times less luminous.
“SPECULOOS-3b is almost the same size as our planet,” — says astronomer Michael Guyon of the University of Liege in Belgium.
The new planet is similar to Earth, except that the year on SPECULOOS-3b lasts only 17 hours, and its days and nights should never end.< /p>
“We believe that the planet rotates synchronously, so that the same side, called the day side, always faces the star in the same way as the Moon faces the Earth, “ explains Gillon. — On the other hand, the night side would be immersed in endless darkness.
Although there are many more ultra-cool dwarfs in the Milky Way than large stars, they are quite difficult to study because they are small, cold and dim. These properties make them harder to see, which is where Project SPECULOOS, known as the search for habitable planets that eclipse ultra-cool stars, comes into play. It's a network of telescopes working together specifically to search for Earth-like exoplanets orbiting tiny stars.
SPECULOOS-3b was discovered using transits — very faint dips in the light of a star when an exoplanet passes in front of it. Based on these measurements, Gillon and his team were able to determine the presence and some of the physical properties of SPECULOOS-3b.
The star around which the exoplanet orbits is tiny — only 12.3 percent of the radius of the Sun, which is slightly larger than Jupiter and 10 percent of the mass of our Star.
However, exoplanet SPECULOOS-3b now has a radius only slightly smaller than that of Earth. Scientists do not know its mass and therefore cannot make any definitive conclusions about its composition, but there are several reasons to believe that the planet is made of dense rocks.
«According to our current understanding of its formation and planetary evolution, a planet the size of SPECULOOS-3b is unlikely to be gas or icy. We may be wrong, but another factor plays a role here: the star itself,” — explains the astronomer.
Ultracold dwarfs are often very active, erupting in frequent outbursts; During the course of its observations, the team recorded at least one of them. The exoplanet is very close to the star. Thus, despite the fact that SPECULOOS-3b is cool and dim, the exoplanet is constantly exposed to strong radiation, which is almost 16 times higher than the level received by the Earth from the Sun.
After a series of studies, astronomers concluded that SPECULOOS -3b is unlikely to be suitable for life, even if it retained an atmosphere.
«Under such conditions, the presence of an atmosphere around the planet is extremely unlikely, — notes planetary scientist Julien de Wit from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. — The fact that this planet has no atmosphere can be a plus in several ways. For example, this could allow us to learn a lot about ultra-cool dwarf stars, which in turn would make it possible to study their potentially habitable planets in more depth.
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