Discovery of strange "solar system" with planet in habitable zone
NASA has just discovered a strange planetary system that possesses a super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes, including one planet that is suitable for extreme creatures to survive.
"Exoplanet Hunter"NASA's TESS has just discovered a "solar system" with at least three planets orbiting a red dwarf star. After that, astronomer Maximilian Günther (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) and his colleagues continued to monitor and decode the mystery of the three strange planets using a ground-based telescope system.
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| Sci-News graphic of the newly discovered planetary system. |
These three planets are between 1.25 and 2.42 times the size of Earth; one is a rocky super-Earth, the other two are"Little Neptune"with gas, rock and ice dominating.
They all orbit very close to their parent star, with a year lasting just 3.4, 5.7, and 11.4 Earth days. The parent star itself is a red dwarf about 40% the size of our sun.
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| Red dwarf star TOI 270 and the shadows of planets orbiting it. |
Although it orbits close to its parent star, the red dwarf is much cooler than the sun, so the farthest planet - sub-Neptune TOI 270d - still maintains a surface temperature of 67 degrees Celsius, a temperature hot enough for water to exist in a liquid state and possibly possess alien life in the form of extremophiles.
This is a planetary system with great potential for long-term research. According to the parameters just published on the electronic encyclopedia of planetsThe Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, it is only 22,453 parsecs, or 77.23 light-years, from Earth.
The study was recently published online on the websitearXiv.org.
