Technology UK CU – Researchers have discovered 2 “super-Earth” planets orbiting a star 100 light-years from Earth.
The research team consists of astronomers at the University of Birmingham that detected the planets orbiting LP 890-9.
The star, known as TOI-4306 or SPECULOOS-2, is the 2nd coolest star found to host planets, after the famous TRAPPIST-1. This rare discovery is the subject of an upcoming publication in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.
The system’s inner planet, known as LP 890-9b, is approximately 30% larger than Earth and completes revolving around the star in just 2.7 days. This 1st planet was classified as a possible planet candidate by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space mission hunting exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. This candidate was confirmed and characterized by the SPECULOOS telescopes which are telescopes that look out for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars, where the University of Birmingham has operations for one. SPECULOOS scientists look out for additional transiting planets in the system that would have been missed by TESS with telescopes.
Laetitia Delrez, a postdoctoral researcher of the University of Liège, and the lead author of the article said “TESS searches for exoplanets using the transit method, by monitoring the brightness of thousands of stars simultaneously, looking for slight dimmings that might be caused by planets passing in front of their stars.”
“However, a follow-up with ground-based telescopes is often necessary to confirm the planetary nature of the detected candidates and to refine the measurements of their sizes and orbital properties.”
The advances in technology and improved data analysis software tools have further advanced space observation for many present-day astronomers.
The researchers emphasized that the follow-up is very significant for very cold stars, such as LP 890-9, which emit most of their light in the near-infrared and for which TESS has a restricted sensitivity.
