Astronomers using the Tess space telescope have discovered two new near-Earth super-Earths orbiting a red dwarf star. They lie on the inner limit of the habitable zone, making them ideal candidates for James-Webb’s quest for atmosphere.
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Launched more than five years ago in search of exoplanets, the Tess space telescope continues to provide valuable data about the worlds around us. With 330 new planets already confirmed and thousands of candidates, Tess continues to search for rocky planets with masses close to Earth’s, known as super-Earths. And two new ones have just been added to his list, described in a study published on ArXiv.
Located 42 parsecs from Earth, or about 137 light-years, the two worlds orbit an M-type red dwarf star named TOI-2095, where TOI stands for Tess Objectives of Interest. They are named for their stars TOI-2095b and TOI-2095c and both have a radius close to that of Earth and a respective mass of 4.1 Earth masses and 7.4 Earth masses. Estimates still have to be adjusted, the researchers explain because of missing data.
Good candidates for atmospheric characterization
What the researchers are interested in, however, is their position in relation to the star TOI-2095. In fact, the study explains that they are on the inner edge of the habitable zone, that is, at the distance from the star that would allow liquid water to exist! Either potentially life… but with many uncertainties because everything depends on the atmosphere of these planets. They may actually have one similar to Venus, making them unsuitable worlds to host life, or on the contrary, because their atmosphere has been destroyed by TOI-2095’s radiation.
But this possibility makes them serious candidates for future James-Webb explorations: they are close enough to Earth and have properties that allow for the existence of liquid water! “In particular, high-precision radial velocity tracking observations may help to improve mass measurements (and thus apparent densities) of planets and set some constraints on future atmospheric characterization prospects,” the researchers wrote.