Nearby Exoplanets Options

[JRehling]

There have been a few topics in recent years pertaining to exoplanets found circling nearby red dwarfs, particularly Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1. There's a new one to report, and I thought I'd give the topic a more general scope rather than specific to this one.

The star in question is Ross 128, and the planet's solar flux is between that of Earth and Venus. There's a good chance that this is potentially the most "habitable" exoplanet yet found, and is happily quite close (13th closest system), so that telescopes will be able to separate the light of the planet from that of the star. This is a circumstance that only a few nearby stars will permit in the foreseeable future, so Ross 128 is likely to figure large in our exoplanet studies over the next century.

https://www.eso.org/public/archives/release...36/eso1736a.pdf

[g4ayu]

Planetary bodies observed in habitable zone of dead star:-
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-h...-zone-dead-star

[StargazeInWonder]

TESS finds a star with two hot transiting terrestrial planets 33 light years away.

https://news.mit.edu/2022/multiplanet-system-nearby-0615

These are great candidates for JWST to study their atmospheres, if the high temperatures haven't stripped any such atmospheres away.

It's also possible that the system would also have more temperate terrestrial planets orbiting farther out, which may not be transiting.

[StargazeInWonder]

TESS has found a system with two planets somewhat larger than Earth, one of which receives 91% the irradiation of Earth from its star. The other receives about twice the irradiation of Venus. Their mass has not yet been characterized.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.02831

Interestingly, this star and TRAPPIST-1 are the two coolest stars known to have exoplanets and both have planets comparable to Earth in size and irradiation.

Both planets, LP 890-9 b and c, will be great targets for JWST to examine for atmospheric composition. LP 890-9 c immediately becomes one of the most intriguing exoplanets known.

[StargazeInWonder]

Not a typo: TESS has discovered a second candidate earthlike planet in the same system where it had made its first such discovery.

TOI 700 e is a little smaller than TOI 700 d, and despite the later discovery and higher letter designation, it orbits closer in than "d", not farther out. It took more observations to discover because its smaller size leads to less prominent transit signals.

As TOI 700 d was not a promising candidate for characterization by JWST, and that's probably true of the new discovery as well, so we may be waiting quite a while until we know more, but as telescopes for characterizing transiting candidate earthlike planets come online, this will be one of the more promising targets waiting for us to make those observations.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tess-di...arth-size-world