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Scientists have discovered nearly 80 exoplanet candidates in the latest data returned by K2, NASA's extended-planet hunting mission.
During the 16th and 17th observation periods of K2, known as C16 and C17, K2 examined about 50,000 stars. Each observation, in which the telescope studies a parcel of the sky, lasts 80 days.
A particularly outstanding planet candidate orbits the brightest star ever studied by K2. Known as HD 73344, the star, located about 114 light-years from Earth, is orbited by a planet-type "hot Neptune" that bypasses it every 15 days.
Estimated to be about 2.5 times the size of Earth and about 10 Earth masses, the planet has an estimated temperature of 2,000 to 1,300 degrees Celsius, which is close to the temperature of lava in an erupting volcano.
"We think it 's probably going to be a smaller, hotter version of Uranus or Neptune," said study co – leader Ian Crossfield. from MIT.
The scientific team that analyzed the latest K2 data did it in record time, using technological tools developed at MIT to help them sift through the graphs, known as light curves. , just two weeks after their return by K2.
This type of analysis usually takes several months to a year.
Such rapid detection of the planet's candidates allows astronomers to track the results by observing the planet's candidates with ground-based telescopes.
Faster tracking observations allow scientists to more easily detect additional transits, from which they confirm that the candidate planets actually exist.
"We found one of the most exciting planets that K2 found in all of its mission, and we did it faster than any previous effort, which shows the way forward for the TESS mission do the same thing on spades all over the world for the next few years, "said Crossfield.
TESS, acronym for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is NASA's new space observatory dedicated to the planet hunt, which was launched on April 18th. Like Kepler, he will use the transit method to search for planets but will observe an area of the sky 400 times larger than that studied by Kepler.
In a document on their results published in The astronomical journal, the researchers note, "Our experience with four years of K2 data leads us to believe that most of them are indeed real planets, ready to be confirmed or validated statistically."
In addition to finding candidates on the planet, scientists who analyzed the data also discovered a supernova in another galaxy and possible signatures of pulsating stars.
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