Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Two planets orbiting nearby star discovered with TESS
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-planets-o ... -tess.html
by Tomasz Nowakowski , Phys.org
Using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered two new exoplanets orbiting a nearby star known as TOI-836. The newfound alien worlds were classified as a super-Earth and a mini-Neptune. The finding is reported in a paper published August 15 on arXiv.org.

TESS is conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets. So far, it has identified over 5,800 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 233 have been confirmed so far.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Faith Hawthorn of the University of Warwick, U.K., confirms another two exoworlds monitored by TESS. They report that transit signals have been identified in the light curve of TOI-836 (or TIC 440887364)—a K-dwarf star located some 90 light years away. The planetary nature of these signals was confirmed by follow-up observations using ESA's CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) and various ground-based facilities.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Lorem Ipsum wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 7:20 pm
weatheriscool wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:26 pm NASA’s Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide in Exoplanet Atmosphere
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... atmosphere
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding, accepted for publication in Nature, offers evidence that in the future Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.

WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of Jupiter (about the same as Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. Its extreme puffiness is related in part to its high temperature (about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or 900 degrees Celsius). Unlike the cooler, more compact gas giants in our solar system, WASP-39 b orbits very close to its star – only about one-eighth the distance between the Sun and Mercury – completing one circuit in just over four Earth-days. The planet’s discovery, reported in 2011, was made based on ground-based detections of the subtle, periodic dimming of light from its host star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star.
Life!?

co2 doesn't mean life. mars and venus have atmospheres that are both 90% co2 but they don't have any life on them.
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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Webb takes its first exoplanet image
01/09/2022 1458 views 58 likes 470244 ID
For the first time, astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of an exoplanet. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our Solar System, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets.

The exoplanet in Webb’s image, called HIP 65426 b, is about six to eight times the mass of Jupiter. It is young as planets go – about 15 to 20 million years old, compared to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag ... anet_image
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First full 3D view of binary star-planet system from VLBA

by National Radio Astronomy Observatory
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-full-3d-v ... lanet.html
By precisely tracing a small, almost imperceptible, wobble in a nearby star's motion through space, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-like planet orbiting that star, which is one of a binary pair. Their work, using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), produced the first-ever determination of the complete, 3-dimensional structure of the orbits of a binary pair of stars and a planet orbiting one of them. This achievement, the astronomers said, can provide valuable new insights on the process of planet formation.

Though more than 5,000 extrasolar planets have been discovered so far, only three have been discovered using the technique—called astrometry—that produced this discovery. However, the feat of determining the 3D architecture of a binary-star system that includes a planet "cannot be achieved with other exoplanet discovery methods," said Salvador Curiel, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
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Re: Exoplanets – worlds of other suns

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'Diamond rain' on giant icy planets could be more common than previously thought

September 2, 2022

A new study has found that "diamond rain," a long-hypothesized exotic type of precipitation on ice giant planets, could be more common than previously thought.

In an earlier experiment, researchers mimicked the extreme temperatures and pressures found deep inside ice giants Neptune and Uranus and, for the first time, observed diamond rain as it formed.

Investigating this process in a new material that more closely resembles the chemical makeup of Neptune and Uranus, scientists from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their colleagues discovered that the presence of oxygen makes diamond formation more likely, allowing them to form and grow at a wider range of conditions and throughout more planets.

The new study provides a more complete picture of how diamond rain forms on other planets and, here on Earth, could lead to a new way of fabricating nanodiamonds, which have a very wide array of applications in drug delivery, medical sensors, noninvasive surgery, sustainable manufacturing, and quantum electronics.

"The earlier paper was the first time that we directly saw diamond formation from any mixtures," said Siegfried Glenzer, director of the High Energy Density Division at SLAC. "Since then, there have been quite a lot of experiments with different pure materials. But inside planets, it's much more complicated; there are a lot more chemicals in the mix. And so, what we wanted to figure out here was what sort of effect these additional chemicals have."

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-diamond-g ... ommon.html


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Birmingham telescope discovers two new temperate rocky worlds
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-birmingha ... orlds.html
by University of Birmingham
An international research team including astronomers at the University of Birmingham, has just announced the discovery of two "super-Earth" planets orbiting LP 890-9, a small, cool star located about 100 light-years from Earth.

The star, also called TOI-4306 or SPECULOOS-2, is the second-coolest star found to host planets, after the famous TRAPPIST-1. This rare discovery is the subject of a forthcoming publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The system's inner planet, called LP 890-9b, is about 30% larger than Earth and completes an orbit around the star in just 2.7 days. This first planet was initially identified as a possible planet candidate by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space mission searching for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. This candidate was confirmed and characterized by the SPECULOOS telescopes (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), one of which is operated by the University of Birmingham. SPECULOOS researchers then used their telescopes to seek additional transiting planets in the system that would have been missed by TESS.

"TESS searches for exoplanets using the transit method, by monitoring the brightness of thousands of stars simultaneously, looking for slight dimmings that might be caused by planets passing in front of their stars," explains Laetitia Delrez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège, and the lead author of the article.

"However, a follow-up with ground-based telescopes is often necessary to confirm the planetary nature of the detected candidates and to refine the measurements of their sizes and orbital properties."
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Surprise finding suggests 'water worlds' are more common than we thought
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-worlds-co ... ought.html
by University of Chicago
Water is the one thing all life on Earth needs, and the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what keeps our planet's climate stable and hospitable. When scientists talk about where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy, planets with water are always at the top of the list.

A new study published in Science suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

"It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy," said Rafael Luque, first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. "It has enormous consequences for the search for habitable planets."
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It's a planet: New evidence of baby planet in the making
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-planet-evidence-baby.html
by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Astronomers agree that planets are born in protoplanetary disks—rings of dust and gas that surround young, newborn stars. While hundreds of these disks have been spotted throughout the universe, observations of actual planetary birth and formation have proved difficult within these environments.

Now, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed a new way to detect these elusive newborn planets—and with it, "smoking gun" evidence of a small Neptune or Saturn-like planet lurking in a disk. The results are described today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Directly detecting young planets is very challenging and has so far only been successful in one or two cases," says Feng Long, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics who led the new study. "The planets are always too faint for us to see because they're embedded in thick layers of gas and dust."

Scientists instead must hunt for clues to infer a planet is developing beneath the dust.

"In the past few years, we've seen many structures pop up on disks that we think are caused by a planet's presence, but it could be caused by something else, too," Long says. "We need new techniques to look at and support that a planet is there."
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Techniques learned from Earth climate science aid in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-technique ... e-aid.html
by University of Exeter

An international team, including astrophysicists from the University of Exeter, is taking lessons and techniques learned from Earth climate science to pave the way to robustly model atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars, aiding in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.

Crucially, the team believes that this research can also enhance our fundamental understanding and predictions of future climate on Earth.

The recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and upcoming telescopes such as the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) or the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) may soon be able to characterize the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets orbiting nearby red dwarfs (stars cooler and smaller than our own sun). However, without robust models to interpret and guide these observations we will not be able to unlock the full potential of these observatories.
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New exoplanet detection program for citizen scientists
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-exoplanet ... tists.html
by SETI Institute
The SETI Institute and its partner Unistellar are launching a new exoplanet detection program that will engage citizen scientists worldwide. Amateur astronomers, using either Unistellar's eVscope or another telescope, will be invited to help confirm exoplanet candidates identified by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) by observing possible exoplanet transits from Earth.

Most known exoplanets have been detected using the transit method, most notably by the Kepler Mission and now TESS. A transit is when a planet passes between its star and the observer, who will see the star dimming as the planet orbits. The demand for follow-up observations of transiting exoplanets is greater than ever. There are currently more than 5,100 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more detections to be confirmed. This program will focus its efforts on exo-Jupiters detected by those NASA missions.

Some estimates suggest that TESS will identify more than 10,000 exoplanet candidates. Follow-up observations are essential for unconfirmed exoplanets to determine if candidates are false positives, such as those caused by eclipsing binaries or transits of low-mass stars. Regular re-observations by ground-based systems are necessary for confirmed planets to keep their orbital ephemerides updated. The potential for citizen scientist contribution to exoplanet science is high and has exciting implications for STEM education.
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