Spain.- A team of researchers has discovered a super-Earth around GJ 740, a cold dwarf star about 36 light-years from Earth, according to the Spanish Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC).
According to the IAC, in recent years, complete observations of red dwarf stars have been made with the aim of locating their orbits around them, and these stellar bodies range from 2,400 to 3,700 km (cooler than 2,000 degrees in the sun) and between 0.08 and 0.45 solar masses.
The study team was led by Borja Toledo, a student at the IAC’s Cerro Ochoa-La Keiza PhD.
The newly discovered Super Earth orbits its star for 2.4 days and has approximately 3 Earth masses.
Due to the planet’s proximity to the Sun and its planet, this new super-Earth may be the object of future research by large-diameter telescopes at the end of this decade, according to the IAC The results of the study are published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“We face the planet with the second shortest orbital period around this type of star. The mass and orbital period of this planet suggest a rock formation and an estimated radius of 1.4 terrestrial radiation, which can be confirmed by future observations of the Des satellite,” Borja Toledo explained.
The data indicate the existence of a possible second planet with an orbital period of 9 years and a mass similar to that of Saturn (approximately 100 Earth masses), although its radial velocity signal may be caused by the magnetic rotation of the star (similar to that experienced by the Sun), so additional data are needed to confirm the origin of this signal.
The IAC explained Kepler’s mission, which is recognized as one of the most successful in locating planets by transport, (which involves the search for small time variations in the brightness of a star caused by the orbits of the planets). Discovered a total of 156 new planets around cold stars.
From these data it is estimated that these types of stars orbit an average of 2.5 planets with an orbital period of less than 200 days.
“The search for new exoplanets around cold stars is driven by a small difference between planetary mass and stellar mass compared to stars of other spectral classes (which helps detect planetary signals), and a large number of these types of stars are in our galaxy,” commented Borja Toledo.
A great super earth that can tell the story of our future https://t.co/Sqh715bvwE
– (ob phobiaIRC)
April 13, 2021
Cool stars are also an excellent target for searching for planets by radial velocity.
This method is based on spectroscopic observations that detect small variations in velocity due to the gravitational pull exerted by the planets orbiting them.
The study is part of the HADES (HArps-n red Dwarf Exoplanet Survey) project, in collaboration with the IAC, Catalonia’s Institute de Sciences de l’Sboy (IEEC-CSIC) and the Italian GAPS (Planetary Global Architecture) project. Systems), and the purpose of locating and classifying extrasolar planets around cold stars.
For this, the HARPS-N spectrograph is used, which is located in the telescope Nacionale Galileo (DNG) of the Roque de los Muchacos Laboratory (Carafia, La Palma).
The discovery was made possible by a six-year surveillance campaign with Herm -s-N, which was completed with measurements of the Carmens spectrographs (Caller Aldo Laboratory, located in Almeria) and Harps (located at La Silla Laboratory, Chile). In support of photovoltaics provided by ASAS and EXORAP studies.