Astronomers have found a planet with an "earthly" atmosphere
An international team of researchers, coordinated by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, made the discovery of a previously unknown exoplanet. As it turned out, the open planet has an atmosphere strongly reminiscent of the terrestrial and it also has a fairly temperate climate.
New planet and its characteristics
This is what scientists called the open exoplanet TOI-1231 b, and this planet with such a not very euphonious name was found thanks to the analysis of collected data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
But that is not all. Also, its real existence was confirmed by independent observations made using a device such as a spectrograph Planet Finder (PFS)which is mounted on the telescope Magellan Clay, located in Chile.
So, according to the main author of the study, D. Berta, only working with highly qualified specialists in their field, who live all over the world, made it possible to complete the entire complex study and fairly accurately determine most of the characteristics of both the host star and the determination of the radius of the exoplanet, as well as its size.
So it turned out that TOI-1231 b in size, as well as density, it strongly resembles Neptune. It is for this reason that astronomers assume that the planet's atmosphere is endowed with the same overall gas atmosphere.
What is known about the planet
Astronomers have found that TOI-1231 b makes its revolutions around a dwarf gas planet, classified as class M. And, despite the fact that, according to calculations, the exoplanet is eight times closer to its star than our Earth is to The Sun, the temperature on the planet's surface practically corresponds to the temperature regime of ours with you Earth.
Such a temperature phenomenon is explained by astronomers by the fact that the mother luminary is much colder and dimmer than our Sun. But at the same time, the discovered planet is significantly larger than the Earth, but somewhat smaller than Neptune. Therefore, scientists attributed the exoplanet to the so-called sub-Neptuns.
Scientists still need to do a lot of work on the analysis of the atmosphere of the open planet. But it is already noted that this planet is one of the most accessible for studying the atmosphere of all exoplanets currently discovered.
If we rely on the study of previous objects, then there is a very high probability that such cold planets in the high layers of the atmosphere are capable of soaring clouds, which further brings the atmosphere closer to Earth type.
This comparison was driven by a recent study of the planet. K2-18b. As a result, it was found that there are traces of water in the planet's atmosphere, and this greatly surprised scientists.
Planet TOI-1231 b one of the few that is very similar in parameters with K2-18b. Further studies of the planet will reveal how often water clouds appear in the atmosphere of an exoplanet with such a temperate climate.
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