An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a warm mini-Neptune. It orbits around a sun-like star.
The discovery was made using the TESS satellite. It managed to detect periodic fluctuations in the brightness of TOI-3493, a yellow dwarf located 315 light-years away from Earth. They correspond to transits of an exoplanet whose diameter is 3.22 times that of Earth.
In subsequent observations made by ground-based observatories, astronomers were also able to determine the mass of this world. It’s nine times the mass of Earth. This gives an average density of 1.47 g/cm3, which corresponds to a mini-Neptune. Such bodies occupy an intermediate position between super-Earths and gas giants like Uranus and Neptune. There are no analogs of similar planets in the solar system.
According to scientists, the exoplanet discovered by TESS is rich in water. It can either have a large core composed mostly of silicates and water, with a thin outer hydrogen layer, or a smaller, denser rocky core with a thick hydrogen shell.
In any case, the newly found world is unlikely to be a favorable place for life, like exoplanet K2-18b, in whose atmosphere biosignatures have recently been found. Its orbit is a short distance from the star. It makes one orbit around every 8.16 days, and its equilibrium surface temperature is estimated to be about 830 °C. This is much higher than the surface temperature of Venus.
We previously reported on how TESS helped astronomers find a vaporizing exoplanet.
According to Phys.org
