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Tag: exoplanet

  • Earth-like planet that may contain water studied by NASA’s Webb telescope

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    Scientists are observing an Earth-like exoplanet that may contain water using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the space agency said in a news release. 

    The exoplanet, known as TRAPPIST-1 e, orbits the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. The system was discovered in 2017. There are seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the star, but planet e is the only one that is at a distance where water on the surface is “theoretically possible,” NASA said. However, astronomers still need to determine if the planet has an atmosphere. 

    To look for an atmosphere, NASA scientists directed the Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument at the TRAPPIST-1 system as planet e passed in front of the star. If the planet has an atmosphere, the starlight that passes through it will be partially absorbed. That will create dips in the light spectrum that reaches the spectrograph. Those dips will allow scientists to determine if the planet has an atmosphere and what chemicals it might be made of. 

    Scientists are also studying the light spectrum of another exoplanet in the system called TRAPPIST-1 b. Researchers have determined that planet has no atmosphere, NASA said, so comparing its output to that of TRAPPIST-1 e allows for a fuller picture of the potential atmosphere on that planet. 

    An artist’s rendering of TRAPPIST-1, with TRAPPIST-1 depicted in the lower right. 

    NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)


    “Webb’s infrared instruments are giving us more detail than we’ve ever had access to before, and the initial four observations we’ve been able to make of planet e are showing us what we will have to work with when the rest of the information comes in,” said Néstor Espinoza of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, a principal investigator on the research team. Espinoza and the research team recently published two scientific papers outlining their initial results. 

    Researchers “feel confident” that TRAPPIST-1 e does not have a primary atmosphere. A primary atmosphere would be made of hydrogen and helium that would have been present when the planet was formed. But the star the planet orbits is “very active,” with “frequent flares,” NASA said, which create stellar radiation that may have “stripped off” that primary atmosphere. However, TRAPPIST-1 e may have built up a “heavier secondary atmosphere.” Many planets, including Earth, have done this, NASA said. Further research with the Webb telescope and its instruments will determine the types of atmosphere and its makeup.

    There are also many possibilities for water on the planet. There may be none at all, NASA said. TRAPPIST-1 e might also contain an ocean or wide swath of water. One side of the planet is always in darkness, so there may also be ice, NASA said. If there is liquid water on the planet, the NASA researchers say there would also be a greenhouse effect, where gases like carbon dioxide keep the atmosphere stable and warm the planet. 

    “We are really still in the early stages of learning what kind of amazing science we can do with Webb. It’s incredible to measure the details of starlight around Earth-sized planets 40 light-years away and learn what it might be like there, if life could be possible there,” said Ana Glidden, a post-doctoral researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, who led the research on possible atmospheres for planet e, in NASA’s news release. “We’re in a new age of exploration that’s very exciting to be a part of,” she said.

    Kerry Breen

    Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.

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  • Astronomers Discover Planet Orbiting Nearest Single Star to the Sun

    Astronomers Discover Planet Orbiting Nearest Single Star to the Sun

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    The single nearest star to the Sun—which is to say, the closest star moving independent from a star system—has at least one exoplanet, according to a team of astronomers that recently scrutinized the heavenly body.

    The team’s research—published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics—describes conclusions made from five years of observational data taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at Chile’s Paranal Observatory.

    The little world orbits Barnard’s star, a red dwarf about six light-years from Earth. Barnard’s star is a dim, cool star about one-seventh the mass of our Sun. Unlike the nearest star to the Sun (Proxima Centauri, a little over four light-years away in the Alpha Centauri star system), Barnard’s star zips through the cosmos alone. As EarthSky points out, Barnard’s star is much less powerful than the Sun; if we orbited that star instead of the Sun, life as we know it would not be possible.

    The same could be said for the spunky exoplanet, but in the opposite direction as a thermometer reads. The star—dubbed Barnard b—is about twenty times closer to its host star than Mercury is to our Sun, and whips around Barnard’s star in just over three Earth days. Given its celestial proximity, the exoplanet is understandably piping, with a surface temperature around 257° Fahrenheit (125° Celsius).

    “Barnard b is one of the lowest-mass exoplanets known and one of the few known with a mass less than that of Earth,” said Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain and the study’s lead author, in an ESO release.

    Barnard’s star was previously suspected to host exoplanets in its orbit—there was promising evidence in 2018, but no certain confirmation—until now.

    The team was looking for exoplanets orbiting Barnard’s star that may exist within the habitable (or “Goldilocks”) zone, a distance from a host star where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface. It does not, so life as we know it can’t exist on the exoplanet.

    “The discovery of this planet, along with other previous discoveries such as Proxima b and d, shows that our cosmic backyard is full of low-mass planets,” said study co-author Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, a researcher also at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in the same release.

    In its new paper, the team also stated that there is evidence of at least three more exoplanet candidates around Barnard’s star, though more observations will be necessary to confirm whether any of those candidates are actual exoplanets.

    The next-generation Extremely Large Telescope, alongside missions like the Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will hopefully yield more discoveries of these not-so-distant alien worlds.

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    Isaac Schultz

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  • NASA announces new ‘super-Earth’: Exoplanet orbits in ‘habitable zone,’ is only 137 light-years away

    NASA announces new ‘super-Earth’: Exoplanet orbits in ‘habitable zone,’ is only 137 light-years away

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    Could a recently discovered “super-Earth” have the potential temperature and conditions to sustain life?

    The new exoplanet is situated “fairly close to us” — only 137 light-years away — and orbits within a “habitable zone,” according to NASA.

    Astronomers say the planet, dubbed TOI-715 b, is about one and a half times the width of Earth and orbits a small, reddish star. The same system also might harbor a second, Earth-sized planet, which, if confirmed, “would become the smallest habitable-zone planet discovered by TESS [the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] so far,” NASA said in a Jan. 31 press release.

    This illustration shows one way that planet TOI-715 b, a super-Earth in the habitable zone around its star, might appear to a nearby observer.

    NASA

    Due to the super-Earth’s distance from its parent star, it could be in a conservative “habitable zone” and harbor the right temperature for liquid water to form on its surface, which is essential to sustain life, according to the agency, which also added that “several other factors would have to line up, of course.”

    NASA said the measurements of the habitable zone — “a narrower and potentially more robust definition than the broader ‘optimistic’ habitable zone” — put the newly discovered planet, and possibly the smaller Earth-sized planet, in “prime position” from its parent star.

    The agency said that because of the short distance the super-Earth orbits from its parent star, a red dwarf that’s smaller and cooler than our Earth’s sun, a “year” for the planet is equal to 19 Earth days.

    The tighter orbits mean the “planets can be more easily detected and more frequently observed,” NASA said.

    Since its launch in 2018, TESS has been adding to astronomers’ stockpile of habitable-zone exoplanets, such as TOI-715 b, that could be more closely scrutinized by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the agency said.

    The Webb telescope is designed to not only detect exoplanets but “explore the composition of their atmospheres, which could offer clues to the possible presence of life,” NASA said.

    The super-Earth research and discovery was led by Georgina Dransfield at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and published in the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” journal in January.

    The findings mark another step forward in astronomers’ mission to understand what atmospheric conditions are needed to sustain life and further explore the characteristics of exoplanets beyond our solar system, NASA said.

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