An international team of researchers announced the discovery of an exoplanet called TOI-1452 b that orbits one of two small stars on one binary system is located in the constellation Draco, about 100 light years from Earth.
It is slightly larger and more massive than Earth, and its distance from its host star means that its temperature is neither too hot nor too cold, which makes it ideal for liquid water to exist on its surface.
Astronomers believe that TOI-1452 b may be an “ocean planet” completely covered in a thick layer of water, similar to some moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Article published this Wednesday (24) in Astronomical journaldescribes research done by Charles Cadier, a doctoral student at the University of Montreal in Canada and a member of the Institute for Exoplanet Research (iREx), which discovered an alien world.
“I am extremely proud of this discovery because it demonstrates the high level of our researchers and instruments,” said Cadieu’s scientific supervisor René Doyon, professor at the University of Montreal and director of iREx and the Mont Megantic Observatory (OMM).
These were the observations Transit satellite for exoplanet exploration (TESS), which explores the entire sky in search of planetary systems close to ours, which allowed researchers to get on the trail of this exoplanet. Based on the TESS signal, which showed a slight decrease in the brightness of the parent star every 11 days, astronomers were able to predict the existence of a planet about 70% larger than Earth.
Kadye belongs to a group of astronomers who are conducting ground-based observations of the candidates identified by TESS to confirm the planet’s type and characteristics. He uses an instrument called PESTO, which is a special camera mounted on the telescope of the Mont-Megantic Observatory (OMM).
“OMM played a critical role in confirming the nature of this signal and in estimating the radius of the planet,” Kadier explained. “This was not a scheduled inspection. We had to verify that the signal detected by TESS was indeed caused by an exoplanet orbiting TOI-1452, the larger of the two stars in this binary system.”
According to him, the main star of TOI-1452 is much smaller than the Sun. It is one of two equally sized stars in a binary system that orbit each other only 97 astronomical units (AU) apart, about two and a half times the distance between the Sun and Pluto. They are so close to each other that TESS sees them as a single point of light.
However, PESTO’s resolution is high enough to distinguish the two objects, and the images showed the exoplanet orbiting TOI-1452, which was confirmed by follow-up observations by the Japanese team.
To determine the mass of the planet, the researchers observed the system using SPIRou, an instrument mounted on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which is located on a US-owned volcanic archipelago.
Developed primarily in Canada, SPIRou is ideal for studying low-mass stars such as TOI-1452 because it operates in the infrared spectrum, where these stars are brightest. However, it took more than 50 hours of observations to estimate the mass of the planet, which is believed to be nearly five times the mass of the Earth.
According to website Phys.org, researchers Etienne Artigo and Neil Cook, also at iREx, played a key role in the data analysis. They have developed a powerful analytical method capable of detecting a planet in data collected with SPIRou. “Line-by-Line (LBL) allows us to clean the data obtained using SPIRou from a lot of spurious signals and identify a weak signature of planets like our team discovered,” Artigau, co-author of the study, explained. the study.
Exoplanet TOI-1452 b is likely rocky like Earth, but its radius, mass, and density suggest a very different world. Our planet is very dry; although about 70% of its surface is covered by oceans. It’s just that water actually makes up only a small part of its mass – less than 1%.
Water may make up to 30% of the mass of exoplanet TOI-1452 b.
In recent years, astronomers have identified and determined the radius and mass of many exoplanets between Earth and Neptune. Some of them have a density that can only be explained if most of their mass is made up of materials lighter than those that make up the Earth’s internal structure, such as water. These hypothetical worlds are called “planet-oceans”.
“TOI-1452 b is one of the best ocean planet candidates we’ve found to date,” Kadier said. “Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than would be expected for a planet that is mostly metal and rock, like Earth.”
The team’s analyzes show that water could make up to 30% of the mass of TOI-1452 b, which is in proportion to some of the natural moons in our solar system, such as Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto and Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. .
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TOI-1452 b is an ideal candidate for future observations of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to test whether it is indeed considered a planet with an ocean, as it is located in a region of the sky that the observatory can see all year round.
“Webb Telescope observations will be necessary to better understand TOI-1452 b,” said Doyon, who helped develop the component. Near Infrared Imaging Instrument and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) JWST. “As soon as we can, we will find time in Webb to observe this strange and wonderful world.”
