Carnegie Institution for Science | 2020 Jan 14
A “cold Neptune” and two potentially habitable worlds are part of a cache of five newly discovered exoplanets and eight exoplanet candidates found orbiting nearby red dwarf stars ...Artist’s concept of GJ180d, which is the nearest temperate super-Earth to us that is
not tidally locked to its star, making it more likely to be able to host and sustain life.
Illustration: Robin Dienel, Carnegie Institution for Science
The two potentially habitable planets are orbiting GJ180 and GJ229A, which are among the nearest stars to our own Sun, making them prime targets for observations by next-generation space- and land-based telescopes. They are both super-Earths with at least 7.5 and 7.9 times our planet’s mass and orbital periods of 106 and 122 days respectively.
The Neptune-mass planet—found orbiting GJ433 at a distance at which surface water is likely to be frozen—is probably the first of its kind that is a realistic candidate for future direct imaging. ...
The newfound worlds were discovered using the radial velocity method for finding planets, which takes advantage of the fact that not only does a star’s gravity influence the planet orbiting it, but the planet’s gravity also affects the star in turn. This creates tiny wobbles in the star’s orbit that can be detected using advanced instruments. Due to their lower mass, red dwarfs are the primary class of stars around which terrestrial mass planets can be found using this technique. ...
Search for Nearby Earth Analogs. II. Detection of Five New Planets, Eight Planet Candidates,
and Confirmation of Three Planets Around Nine Nearby M Dwarfs ~ Fabo Feng et al
- Astrophysical Journal Supplement 246(1):11 (2020 Jan) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab5e7c
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2001.02577 > 08 Jan 2020 (v1), 09 Jan 2020 (v2)
- Astronomical Journal 158(6):251 (2019 Dec) DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ab4905