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A smaller exoplanet than Neptune with its own atmosphere was discovered in the Neptunian desert around its star by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick playing a leading role.
The rogue planet has been identified in the new research led by Dr. Richard West, including Professors Peter Wheatley, Daniel Bayliss and James McCormac of the Astronomy and Astrophysics group at the University of Warwick.
NGTS is located at the Paranal Observatory of the European Southern Observatory, in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. It is a collaboration between the British Universities of Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge and Queen's University Belfast, as well as the Geneva Observatory, the Berlin DLR and the University of Belfast. 39, University of Chile.
NGTS-4b, also dubbed "the forbidden planet" by researchers, is a planet smaller than Neptune but three times larger than Earth.
It has a mass of 20 land masses and a radius 20% smaller than Neptune, and is 1000 degrees Celsius. It gravitates around the star in just 1.3 days – the equivalent of the Earth 's orbit around the year – old sun.
It is the first exoplanet of this type to have been found in the Neptunian Desert.
The Neptunian Desert is the region near the stars where no planet of size Neptune has been found. This zone is strongly irradiated by the star, which means that the planets do not keep their gaseous atmosphere because they evaporate to form only a rocky core. However, NGTS-4b still has its gas atmosphere.
When they are looking for new planets, astronomers are looking for a plunge in the light of a star – the planet revolves around it and blocks the light. Ground dives typically only detect troughs of 1% or more, but NGTS telescopes can register a dip of only 0.2%.
The researchers believe that the planet could have moved into the Neptunian desert recently, in the last million years, or that it was very large and that the atmosphere continues to be unplanned. # 39; evaporate.
Richard West, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, comments:
"This planet must be hard – it's exactly in the area where we were expecting planets the size of Neptune." It's really remarkable that we have found a planet in transit via a star whose darkening is less than 0.2% made before with ground telescopes, and it was great to find it after working on this project for a year.
"We are exploring the data to see if we can see more planets in the Neptune desert, maybe the desert is greener than we thought."
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Material provided by University of Warwick. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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