Discovery of extrasolar planets Published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics by an international team of 50 astronomers around the world in a star system called Wolf 1069, a red dwarf star just 31 light-years away from Earth.
The team has confirmed the existence of an exoplanet called Wolf 1069b, which is unique in that it is a rocky planet regarding 1.26 Earth’s in mass, 1.08 Earth’s in size, and orbiting in a habitable belt. live
Although astronomers have discovered more than 5,200 exoplanets, fewer than 200 of them are rocky. And even less to find a star the size of the Earth. This is only 1.5 percent, or regarding 78 stars, so finding Earth-like stars is always exciting.
Wolf 1069b resembles our planet Mercury in the solar system. That is, it has a very close orbital period. This takes only 15.6 days, orbiting regarding 15 times closer to our planet and from being a red dwarf. A star that is smaller and lower in temperature than our Sun, Wolf 1069b receives regarding 65 percent of the light received by Earth from the Sun. This increases the chances of living on the planet.
“When we analyzed Wolf 1069’s data, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet with approximately the mass of Earth,” said Diana Kossakowski, an astronomer from The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and author of the study said in a statement.
In addition, another unique feature of it is the so-called tidal lock, which keeps the planet locked on one side so it always faces the star. while the other side will always be the dark side The same happened to our moon. Even if there’s no day or night But astronomers point out that the middle between the two zones is habitable.
The discovery was made by an instrument called CARMENES, a 3.5-metre telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain that can observe astronomical objects using optical splitters. This led it to detect that Wolf 1069b’s star exhibited slight oscillations caused by planetary orbits. Unfortunately, current technology is unable to detect chemical traces of life.
“We might have to wait another 10 years for this,” Kosskovki said. “With newer technology, stay tuned. Maybe our descendants will experience life on other planets.”
Searched and edited by Vitit Borompichaichatkul
Photograph by NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
source
https://www.aanda.org/component/article?access=doi&doi=10.1051%2F0004-6361%2F202245322&fbclid=IwAR2KMIGrZ8Mn5MuG8jwQ8FeM7Gt6a7ALZ-iXU25XKa1YmiUWtFMFal4VPp0
https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-find-what-may-be-a-habitable-world-31-light-years-away
https://www.space.com/wolf-1069-b-exoplanet-habitable-earth-mass-discovery
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