Meet Ross 508b: Scientists discover an exoplanet “SUPER EARTH” four times larger than our own planet orbiting a star 36.5 light-years away
- A new “super Earth” has been detected that is four times larger than our own planet
- The exoplanet, called Ross 508b, is orbiting a star 36.5 light-years away.
- Previous research suggests that the world is likely to be rocky rather than gaseous
- The “Super-Earths” are more massive than Earth but do not exceed the mass of Neptune
From Sam Tonkin for Mailonline
Posted: 16:34, June 3, 2022 | Updated: 4:37 PM, June 3, 2022
A new “super-Earth” has been seen that is four times larger than our own planet orbiting a star just 36.5 light-years away.
The exoplanet, named Ross 508b, was discovered in the so-called habitable zone of a faint red dwarf that surrounds every 10.75 days.
This is much faster than the 365-day Earth’s orbit, but the star that orbits Ross 508b is much smaller and fainter than our sun.
Despite being in this “Golden Rites” area, where it’s not too hot or too cold for liquid water, experts think it’s unlikely to be habitable for life as we know it.
But according to what is known about the limits of planetary mass, the newly identified world is likely to be terrestrial, or rocky, in the same way as Earth, rather than gaseous.
A new “super-Earth” has been seen that is four times larger than our own planet orbiting a star just 36.5 light-years away. The exoplanet Ross 508b was discovered in the living area of a faint red dwarf. Pictured is the impression of a super-Earth artist orbiting a red dwarf
Ross 508b was detected by an international team of astronomers using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.
It is described in an article directed by astronomer Hiroki Harakawa of the Subaru Telescope, and is the first exoplanet in the campaign.
Ross 508b orbits a nearby dwarf star M known as Ross 508, which is why it was named.
The ‘Super-Earths’ are more massive planets than ours but do not exceed the mass of Neptune.
Although the term only refers to the mass of the planet, experts also use it to describe planets larger than Earth but smaller than the so-called ‘mini-Neptus’.
“We have shown that the Ross 508 nan M4.5 has a significant RV frequency of 10.75 days with possible aliases at 1,099 and 0.913 days,” the researchers said.
“This periodicity has no counterpart in photometry or stellar activity indicators, but fits well into a Kepler orbit due to a new planet, Ross 508b.”
Ross 508, with 18 percent of the mass of our sun, is one of the smallest and faintest stars with an orbiting world that has been discovered using radial velocity.
The main technique for finding exoplanets is the transit method, which is what NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunting telescope uses, as well as Kepler before it.
Ross 508b was detected by an international team of astronomers using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. They found him with a technique known for radial velocity
It is an instrument that stares at stars and looks for regular drops in their light that are caused by an object orbiting the Earth and the star.
Astronomers then use the depth of traffic to calculate the mass of the object, the larger the light curve, the larger the planet.
With the help of this method, a total of 3,858 exoplanets have been confirmed.
But the other technique is radial velocity, which is also known as the oscillation method or Doppler.
It can detect “bubbles” in a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
The oscillations also affect the light coming from the star. As it moves toward the Earth, its light appears to shift toward the blue part of the spectrum, and as it moves away, it appears to shift toward red.
The new discovery suggests that future radial velocity surveys at infrared wavelengths have the potential to detect a large number of exoplanets orbiting faint stars.
“Our discovery shows that near-infrared RV search can play a crucial role in finding a low-mass planet around fresh M dwarfs like Ross 508,” the researchers wrote in their article.
The research has been published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan and is available at arXiv.
Scientists study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets using huge space satellites like Hubble
Distant stars and their orbiting planets often have different conditions than those we see in our atmosphere.
To understand these new worlds and what they are made of, scientists need to be able to detect what their atmospheres are.
They often do this using a telescope similar to NASA’s Hubble Telescope.
These huge satellites scan the sky and attach to exoplanets that NASA believes may be of interest.
Here, the sensors on board perform different forms of analysis.
One of the most important and useful is the so-called absorption spectroscopy.
This form of analysis measures the light that comes out of a planet’s atmosphere.
Each gas absorbs a wavelength slightly different from light, and when this happens a black line appears in a full spectrum.
These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, which indicates its presence on the planet.
Fraunhofer lines are often named in honor of the German astronomer and physicist who first discovered them in 1814.
By combining all the different wavelengths of light, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up a planet’s atmosphere.
The key is that what is missing, provides the clues to find out what is there.
It is vital that this be done with space telescopes, as then the Earth’s atmosphere would interfere.
The absorption of chemicals into our atmosphere would alter the sample, so it is important to study the light before it has had a chance to reach Earth.
It is often used to search for helium, sodium, and even oxygen in alien atmospheres.
This diagram shows how light passing through a star and through the atmosphere of an exoplanet produces Fraunhofer lines that indicate the presence of key compounds such as sodium or helium.