The discovery: Planet TOI-1452 b.
Key facts: Using observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) backed up by ground-based telescopes, an international team led by the University of Montreal has announced the discovery of a “super-Earth” – a planet that is potentially as rocky as ours, but more large – orbiting a red dwarf star about 100 light years away. Further investigation may shed light on an intriguing possibility: that the planet is a “water world.”
details: Oceanic planets have long been imagined but difficult to confirm, and TOI-1452 b is no different. About 70% larger than Earth and roughly five times more massive, its density could be consistent with the presence of a very deep ocean. But more follow-up will be needed. A planet can also be a huge rock with little or no atmosphere. It might even be a rocky planet with an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.
If TOI-1452 b turns out to be an ocean world, that ocean may indeed be quite deep. While the Earth’s surface is 70% water, our blue sea makes up less than 1% of Earth’s mass. A simulation of TOI-1452 b created by computer modelers on the discovery team showed that water could make up as much as 30% of its mass. This ratio is comparable to our solar system’s watery moons—Jupiter’s Ganymede and Callisto or Saturn’s Titan and Enceladus—which are thought to harbor deep oceans beneath shells of ice.
TOI-1452 b completes a complete orbit around its star every 11 days – TOI-1452 b’s ‘year’. But because a red dwarf star is smaller and cooler than our Sun, the planet receives a similar amount of light from its star as Venus receives from our Sun. Liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface despite its close orbit. The star, by the way, is one of the pair; its gravitational partner is also a red dwarf, estimated to have a 1,400-year orbit.
Fun facts: The planet TOI-1452 b appears ideally positioned for further study by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is now providing scientific observations from its location about a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. The planet’s distance of 100 light years is, in astronomical terms, quite close. Its relatively bright star should allow Webb to pick up a spectrum of starlight shining through its atmosphere, a sort of fingerprint of atmospheric components. It also appears in a part of the sky, in the constellation Draco, that Webb can observe almost any time of the year. Discovery team researchers say they will try to time Webb for a closer look.
Discoverers: The international team that discovered the planet was led by Charles Cadillo, Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal. Read the university’s press release.
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