Meet Ross 508b: Scientists have discovered the exoplanet SUPER EARTH, four times the size of our own planet, orbiting a star 36.5 light-years away
- A new “super Earth” has been spotted, four times the size of our own planet
- An exoplanet called Ross 508b orbits a star that is 36.5 light-years away
- Previous research has shown that the world is likely to be rocky rather than gaseous
- “Super-Earths” are more massive than Earth, but do not exceed the mass of Neptune
By Sam Tonkin for Mailonline
Posted: 16:34, 3 June 2022 | Updated: 16:37, 3 June 2022
A new “super-Earth” that is four times the size of our own planet has been spotted orbiting a star only 36.5 light-years away.
The exoplanet, named Ross 508b, was discovered in the so-called habitable red dwarf habitat, which orbits every 10.75 days.
This is much faster than Earth’s orbit of 365 days, but the star around which the Ross 508b orbits is much smaller and weaker than our sun.
Although they are in this area of Goldilocks – where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist – experts believe it is unlikely to be habitable for life as we know it.
But based on what is known about the boundaries of planetary mass, the newly identified world is likely to be terrestrial or rocky, much like Earth, not gaseous.
A new “super-Earth” that is four times the size of our own planet has been spotted orbiting a star only 36.5 light-years away. The exoplanet Ross 508b has been discovered in the habitat of a faint red dwarf. The photo shows the impression of an artist from Super Earth orbiting a red dwarf
Ross 508b was spotted by an international team of astronomers using the National Astronomical Observatory of the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.
It is described in an article led by astronomer Hiroki Harakawa of the Subaru telescope and is the first exoplanet in the campaign.
Ross 508b orbits the nearby M-dwarf star known as Ross 508, which is why it got its name.
“Super-Earths” are planets larger than ours, but not exceeding the mass of Neptune.
Although the term refers only to the mass of the planet, it is also used by experts to describe planets larger than Earth but smaller than the so-called “mini-Neptunes”.
“We have shown that the dwarf M4.5 Ross 508 has a significant RV frequency of 10.75 days with possible aliases at 1,099 and 0,913 days,” the researchers said.
“This periodicity has no analogue in photometry or stellar activity indicators, but is well-suited to Keplerian orbit due to the new planet Ross 508b.”
Ross 508, with 18 percent of the mass of our sun, is one of the smallest, palest stars with an orbital world detected by radial velocity.
The main technique for finding exoplanets is the transit method, which uses the TESS telescope to hunt NASA’s exoplanets, like Kepler before it.
Ross 508b was spotted by an international team of astronomers using the National Astronomical Observatory of the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. They found it with a technique known for radial speed
This includes an instrument that stares at the stars and seeks regular dips in their light caused by an object orbiting the Earth and the star.
Astronomers then use the depth of the transit to calculate the mass of the object, and the larger the curve of light, the larger the planet.
A total of 3858 exoplanets have been confirmed using this method.
But the other technique is radial velocity, which is also known as the method of oscillation or Doppler.
It can detect “oscillations” in a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbital planet.
The oscillations also affect the light coming from the star. As it moves toward Earth, its light appears to be shifted toward the blue part of the spectrum, and as it recedes, it appears to be shifted toward red.
The new discovery suggests that future studies of radial velocity in infrared wavelengths have the potential to reveal a huge number of exoplanets orbiting dark stars.
“Our findings suggest that close infrared search for RV may play a crucial role in finding a low-mass planet around cool M dwarfs like the Ross 508,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
The study is published in the publications of the Japanese Astronomical Society and is available on arXiv.
Scientists study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets using huge space satellites such as Hubble
Distant stars and their orbital planets often have conditions different from anything we see in our atmosphere.
To understand these new worlds and what they are made of, scientists must be able to discover what their atmosphere consists of.
They often do this with a telescope similar to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
These huge satellites scan the sky and focus on exoplanets that NASA believes may be of interest.
Here, the sensors on board perform various forms of analysis.
One of the most important and useful is called absorption spectroscopy.
This form of analysis measures the light that comes out of the planet’s atmosphere.
Each gas absorbs a slightly different wavelength of light, and when this happens, a black line appears across the spectrum.
These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, which indicates its presence on the planet.
They are often called Fraunhofer lines after the German astronomer and physicist who first discovered them in 1814.
By combining all the different wavelengths of light, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up the planet’s atmosphere.
The key is that what is missing gives clues to find out what is present.
It is vital to do this with space telescopes, because then the Earth’s atmosphere would interfere.
The absorption of chemicals in our atmosphere would distort the sample, so it is important to study the light before it has a chance to reach Earth.
This is often used to search for helium, sodium and even oxygen in extraterrestrial atmospheres.
This diagram shows how light passing from a star and through the exoplanet’s atmosphere produces Fraunhofer lines showing the presence of key compounds such as sodium or helium.
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