A strange "solar system" has been discovered with a planet in the habitable zone.
NASA has just discovered a bizarre planetary system that includes a super-Earth and two mini-Neptunes, one of which is potentially habitable for extreme life forms.
"Alien Hunter"NASA's TESS has just discovered a "solar system" with at least three planets orbiting a red dwarf star. Astronomer Maximilian Günther (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) and his colleagues are now monitoring and unraveling the mystery of these three unusual planets using ground-based telescopes.
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| Sci-News graphic of the newly discovered planetary system. |
These three planets range in size from 1.25 to 2.42 times that of Earth; one of them is a rocky super-Earth, and the other two are..."Little Neptune"with gas, ice, and frost dominating.
They all orbit very close to their parent star, with a year lasting only 3.4, 5.7, and 11.4 Earth days, respectively. The parent star itself is a red dwarf about 40% the size of our sun.
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| The red dwarf star TOI 270 and the faint shadows of the planets orbiting it. |
Despite orbiting close to its parent star, the red dwarf is much cooler than the sun, so its furthest planet – the mini-Neptune TOI 270d – still maintains a surface temperature of 67 degrees Celsius, a temperature sufficient for water to exist in liquid form and potentially support extraterrestrial life in the form of extremist organisms.
This is a planetary system with great potential for long-term study. According to data recently published on an online encyclopedia of planets.The Extrasolar Planets EncyclopaediaIt is only 22,453 parsecs away from Earth, equivalent to 77.23 light-years.
The study was recently published online on the website.arXiv.org.
