The fifth planet was detected within the habitable zone of adjacent stars. There, conditions can probably support liquid water and potential life.
Located about 35 light years from Earth, the L 98-59 is a cool, dim red dwarf star already known to host a compact system of small rocky planets. The latest discoveries led by researchers at the Trotier Institute at the University of Montreal on their de-formation confirm the existence of the L 98-59 F, a super-earth with a minimum mass of 2.8 times the minimum mass of our planet.
The newly discovered exoplanet follows a nearly completely circular 23-day orbit around its star. According to a university statement, the world receives about the same amount of star energy as Earth, and places it in the star habitable zone.
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“Finding temperate planets in such a compact system makes this discovery particularly exciting,” said Charles Cuddieu, a university postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, in a statement. “It highlights the pronounced diversity of deployment systems and strengthens the case for studying a potentially habitable world around low-mass stars.”
L 98-59 F was discovered by reanalytical data from the Southern European Observatory (ESO) HARP (high-precision radial bone velocity planet searcher) and espresso (the exoplanet of rocks and the Eschel spectrometer for stable spectroscopic observation). Explanet does not pass or pass through the host’s star from our perspective, so astronomers have found it by tracking the subtle changes in the movement of the star caused by the planet’s gravitational gravitation.
Advanced techniques were used to eliminate stellar noise by combining spectrograph data with observations from NASA’s Tess (transit of the Explonet Survey Satellite) and James Webbspace Telescope (JWST).
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This study shows that the innermost planet, L 98-59 B, is only 84% of Earth’s size and half its mass, making it one of the smallest exoplanets measured. Tide forces can promote volcanic activity on the two innermost planets of the system, but the third unusually low density suggests that unlike anything in the solar system, it could be a water-rich world. This diversity offers a rare opportunity to explore the formation and evolution of planetary systems beyond ourselves, team members said.
“These new results create the most complete picture of the fascinating L 98-59 system ever,” says Cadieux. “This is a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved by combining data from space telescopes on Earth with precision instruments, providing an important target for future atmospheric research using James Webb Space Telescope.”
Because L 98-59 is small and close, the planet is particularly suitable for follow-up atmospheric studies. If the L 98-59 F has atmosphere, telescopes like JWST may be able to detect water vapor, carbon dioxide, or biosignatures.
The new study was published in the Journal Earth and Planetary Astrophysics on July 12th.
This article was originally published on Space
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