An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of a previously unknown super-Earth. It orbits a dwarf star located 120 light-years from the Sun.
The discovery was made during the analysis of spectroscopy metric data from the TESS space telescope. It measures the brightness of stars to search for brightness drops caused by transits of bodies orbiting around them. During its work, TESS has discovered over 6,700 candidates for exoplanets. 363 of them have been confirmed to date.
These 363 confirmed exoplanets include the recently discovered TOI-1680 b. It orbits a dim red dwarf that is five times smaller and five times less massive than our Sun. The orbital period of the exoplanet is 4.8 days, its orbit lies at a distance of 4.5 million km from the parent star.
TOI-1680 b is a super-Earth. Its radius is 1.46 times the radius of the Earth with a mass of 3.18 terrestrial. The average density of 5.5 g/cm3 means that it is a rocky body. However, due to its proximity to the star, TOI-1680 b is hardly a favorable place to live. According to astronomers, the equilibrium temperature of its surface is about 130 °C.
Despite this, the find is of considerable interest. The study shows that TOI-1680 b has a high spectral transmittance. This means that it is a very promising candidate for studying the characteristics of its atmosphere using the James Webb Space Telescope.
Earlier we talked about the discovery of a super-Earth that completely lost its atmosphere.
According to https://phys.org
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