Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

weatheriscool
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Webb confirms its first exoplanet
Researchers have confirmed the presence of an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration ... _exoplanet
weatheriscool
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Discovery Alert: Two 'Nearby' Worlds Might be Habitable
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1719/d ... habitable/
By Pat Brennan, NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program
The discovery: Two planets about as massive as Earth orbit a red-dwarf star only 16 light-years away – nearby in astronomical terms. The planets, GJ 1002 b and c, lie within the star’s habitable zone, the orbital distance that could allow liquid water to form on a planet’s surface if it has the right kind of atmosphere.

Key facts: Whether red-dwarf stars are likely to host habitable worlds is a subject of scientific debate. On the minus side, these stars – smaller, cooler, but far longer-lived than stars like our Sun – tend to flare frequently in their youth. Such flares could potentially strip the atmospheres from closely orbiting planets, and the two planets orbiting GJ 1002 are close indeed. Planet b, with a mass slightly higher than Earth’s, is the closer of the two. Its year, once around the star, lasts only 10 days. Planet c, about a third more massive than Earth, takes about 20 days to orbit the star.
The latest

On the plus side, however, GJ 1002 seems to be mature enough to have gotten over its youthful tantrums, and now appears quiet. It’s even possible that the early flaring helped build up a variety of molecules on the planets’ surfaces that could be used later, during the star’s quiet period, by any developing life forms that might be present.

Details: An international team led by Alejandro Suárez Mascareño of the University of La Laguna, Spain, discovered the two new planets using radial velocity measurements – that is, detecting the “wobbles” of the parent star caused by gravitational tugs from orbiting planets. As the planets move toward the far side of the star, they pull the star away from us, causing the star’s light to shift toward the red end of the spectrum. As the planets move toward the star’s near side, they pull the star in our direction, shifting its light toward the blue. The planetary tugs on GJ 1002 are tiny, about 4.3 feet (1.3 meters) per second – equivalent to moving at about 3 miles per hour (4.8 kilometers per hour). Such small movements are difficult to detect.

The radial velocity method, which also reveals how massive the planets are, has yielded more than 1,000 confirmed detections of exoplanets. The most detections, however, have been notched using the “transit” method – watching for a tiny dip in starlight as a planet crosses in front of its star – with nearly 4,000 confirmed detections.

To make its radial velocity measurements, the science team relied on instruments called spectrographs, which measure variations in light. The spectrographs used to discover GJ 1002 b and c were part of two collaborative observation programs: The Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO), and the Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M-dwarfs with Exoearths with Near-infrared and optical Échelle Spectrographs (CARMENES).

Fun facts: The new planets join 10 others in a fairly exclusive category: small worlds in the “conservative” habitable zone that are less than 1.5 times the size of Earth or less than five times as massive. If we loosen the membership criteria a bit – slightly larger planets in the “optimistic” habitable zone – the group expands to about 40 exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system. The conservative habitable zone is a stricter boundary for the region around a star that might allow planets to harbor water; optimistic habitable zones expand that boundary a bit. Any habitable zone estimate is a rough approximation. So far, none of these worlds’ atmospheres have been fully analyzed – and many might not possess atmospheres at all.

The discoverers: A paper on the discovery, “Two temperate Earth-mass planets orbiting the nearby star GJ 1002,” by A. Suárez Mascareño and his team, has been accepted for publication in the journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics. The planets were entered into NASA’s Exoplanet Archive on Dec. 22, 2022.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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An Earth-sized Planet around an M5 Dwarf Star at 22 pc
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.00699
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Astronomers discover potential habitable exoplanet only 31 light-years from Earth
By Laurence Tognetti
https://www.space.com/15693-telescopes- ... guide.html
Although astronomers have discovered more than 5,200 exoplanets, less than 200 are rocky — so the discovery of a new terrestrial exoplanet is always exciting.

In a new study, a team of 50 astronomers from around the world have confirmed the existence of exoplanet Wolf 1069 b, which orbits a red dwarf star, Wolf 1069, only 31 light-years from Earth. What makes this discovery particularly intriguing is that Wolf 1069 b is potentially a rocky world, at about 1.26 the mass of Earth and 1.08 the size. Wolf 1069 b also orbits in its star's habitable zone, making it a prime candidate for liquid water to potentially exist on its surface.

"When we analyzed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass," Diana Kossakowski, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and lead author on the new research, said in a statement. "It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-15th of the separation between the Earth and the sun."
firestar464
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecarte ... en-planet/

Frankly unsure this is necessary as by the time 1K years has passed, our tech will be good enough to do this in much less time. The only value I can see for this project is to send out another time capsule like Voyager or something, but we can wait a few more decades to do that.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Researchers focus AI on finding exoplanets
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-focus-ai-exoplanets.html
by Alan Flurry, University of Georgia

New research from the University of Georgia reveals that artificial intelligence can be used to find planets outside of our solar system. The recent study demonstrated that machine learning can be used to find exoplanets, information that could reshape how scientists detect and identify new planets very far from Earth.

"One of the novel things about this is analyzing environments where planets are still forming," said Jason Terry, doctoral student in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of physics and astronomy and lead author on the study. "Machine learning has rarely been applied to the type of data we're using before, specifically for looking at systems that are still actively forming planets."

The first exoplanet was found in 1992, and though more than 5,000 are known to exist, those have been among the easiest for scientists to find. Exoplanets at the formation stage are difficult to see for two primary reasons. They are too far away, often hundreds of lights years from Earth, and the disks where they form are very thick, thicker than the distance of the Earth to the sun. Data suggests the planets tend to be in the middle of these disks, conveying a signature of dust and gases kicked up by the planet.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02810

The 10 parsec sample in the Gaia era: first update
C. Reyle, K. Jardine, P. Fouque, J. A. Caballero, R. L. Smart, A. Sozzetti
We provide an update of the catalogue of all objects closer than 10 pc from the Sun. This list shows the high variety of objects contained in the immediate vicinity of the Sun.
It contains 541 objects divided between 371 stars, including 21 white dwarfs, 85 brown dwarfs, and 85 confirmed exoplanets in 336 systems. It contains the most recent astrometry from the last Gaia data release when available. As (Reylé et al., 2021) already pointed out, the updates concern close binaries, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets, and we expect that in the future the number of stars and brown dwarfs will be superseded by exoplanets. In addition, we explore the new products offered by the most recent Gaia DR3, including astrophysical parameters, additional radial velocities, non single star orbital solutions, and variability parameters. This list provides a set of benchmark stars to be studied in detail with current and forthcoming instruments. More parameters, in particular on the non-single stars (including exoplanets) are expected in the forthcoming Gaia data releases.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Massive 'forbidden planet' orbits a strangely tiny star only 4 times its size
By Robert Lea

Image
published about 16 hours ago
The discovery could challenge our theories of how gas giants like Jupiter form.

Astronomers have discovered an unusual planetary system consisting of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a tiny star that is only four times the size of the solar system gas giant. This "forbidden" configuration of a massive planet orbiting a relatively tiny star could challenge theories of how gas giant planets form.

The extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," orbits a red dwarf star designated TOI 5205 that is much cooler and smaller than the sun. The small size and relatively cool temperatures of these M-dwarf stars, the most common type of stellar body in the Milky Way, make them redder than the sun.

Though on average this class of stars hosts more planets around them than other star types, it was previously believed that their formation makes them unlikely to be orbited by gas giants. The discovery of this exoplanet  —  designated TOI 5205b  —  by astronomers using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) telescope challenges that concept. The planet was confirmed and characterized by the team using various ground-based telescopes and instruments.
https://www.space.com/forbidden-planet- ... -tiny-star
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The First Circumbinary Planet Discovered With Radial Velocities
By Keith Cowing
https://astrobiology.com/2023/02/the-fi ... ities.html
February 26, 2023
The First Circumbinary Planet Discovered With Radial Velocities
Overview of the TOI-1338/BEBOP-1 system along with the extent of the systems habitable zone calculated using the Multiple Star HZ website (45). The conservative habitable zone is shown by the dark green region, while the optimistic habitable zone is shown by the light green region. Binary stars are marked by the blue stars in the centre. TOI-1338/BEBOP-1c’s orbit is shown by the red orbit models, based on 500 randomly drawn posterior samples from a kima run, shaded from the 50th to 99th percentiles. TOI-1338/BEBOP-1b’s orbit is shown by the yellow models, and is also based on 500 random samples drawn from the posterior in its discovery paper (17). — astro-ph.EP
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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The TESS Triple-9 Catalog II: a new set of 999 uniformly-vetted exoplanet candidates
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.00624

Twelve the most significant validated planet candidates: TOI-161, 277*, 1086, 1107, 1163, 1186, 1272*, 1274, 1302, 1482, 1845 and 2659.

* Already confirmed and listed exoplanet hosts.
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