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Representation by an artist of the satellite of investigation on the exoplanets in transit to the work in the process of locating the exoplanets.
Credit: NASA
Scientists examining data from NASA's latest research telescope announced they had spotted a second possible planet, just three days after several team members announced their first discovery.
The two potential planets are the starting point for a discovery that scientists estimate can reach 10,000 worlds in just two years. Both come from the first month of observation of the instrument – called the Exoplanets Monitoring Satellite in Transit (TESS) – which changes position each month to better study the sky.
"A second planet candidate @NASA_TESS has been discovered!" scientists with the mission announced on Twitter on Thursday (September 20th). Slightly larger than the Earth, this planet revolves around LHS 3844, a dwarf star M located 49 light-years away, every 11 hours. This discovery is being examined by other scientists and we look forward to studying this "hot earth". [NASA’s TESS Exoplanet-Hunting Mission in Pictures]
TESS works by looking at a star field to monitor their brightness. If these stars host planets that line up just between the telescope and a star, the instrument registers a slight drop in brightness when the planet blocks the star. By observing many of these events, called transits, scientists can calculate the size of the planet and the length of its year.
The candidate of the planet, recently spotted, revolves around a star called LHS 3844, a small weak star called red dwarf. This makes the new world one of the closest exoplanets to the Earth, since LHS 3844 is 49 light-years away, scientists have reported in a new study.
On this strange world, which is about one-third the size of the Earth, a year lasts only 11 hours. This short year means that the planet is uncomfortably close to its star and that solar flares are too important for the planet to be habitable, wrote the authors.
A second @NASA_TESS the candidate planet has been discovered! Slightly larger than the Earth, this planet revolves around LHS 3844, a dwarf star M located 49 light-years away, every 11 hours. This discovery is being examined by other scientists and we look forward to studying this "hot earth".
– NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) September 20, 2018
But even if we would not want to live there, it would be nice to know more. The research team also used ground telescopes to study the star system to verify that the signal they were capturing was not a mere stroke of luck. It also gave them an idea of the surface temperature of the planet – nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (531 degrees Celsius).
Because of the high temperature of the exoplanet candidate and the proximity of his star, scientists are particularly curious about whether the planet can cling to an atmosphere so close to its star. If it has an atmosphere, it would also suggest that the planet formed further, then approached its star after that star came out of its first crises and calmed down like stars, write the authors. The proximity of the star to the Earth means that the observations necessary to study its atmosphere may very well be possible, they added.
TESS has moved to its next parcel of sky at the end of August and this survey is expected to end late this month. Once these data return to Earth, they will also result in a series of tentative identifications of the planet as the telescope continues to perform the work for which it was designed.
The new candidate for the planet, which will now be considered and studied by other scientists to see if it really is about a planet, is described in an article published yesterday (September 19 ) on the arXiv.org preprint server and submitted to the astrophysics journal. .
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her @meghanbartels. follow us @ Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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