Discovery Alert! A newly discovered exoplanet is passing in and out of its star’s habitable zone. It is 37 light-years from Earth and about four times the mass of our planet, making Ross 508b a super-Earth. One year there, one orbit, lasts just 10.8 days! pic.twitter.com/MW7Cap45If — NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) August 3, 2022 The exoplanet has a mass about four times the mass of our planet and has given us a problem – “it goes in and out of its star’s habitable zone”. The planet – called Ross 508b – is constantly moving in and out of its habitable zone, but it still has a chance to hold water on its surface, and as the James Webb Space Telescope begins operations, it could be a crucial find . The distance from a star at which liquid water could exist on the surfaces of orbiting planets is referred to as the habitable zone. Habitable zones, also called “Goldilocks zones,” may have ideal environmental conditions for life to flourish because they are neither too hot nor too cold. Ross 508b passes through this belt in its orbit around the star. The exoplanet orbits a star one-fifth the mass of the Sun. Located at the inner edge of its habitable zone, the average distance from its central star is 0.05 times the Earth-Sun distance. Also read | NASA’s viral photo of distant galaxies will blow your mind. See photos of space Ross 508 b is the result of a renewed emphasis on red dwarf stars, which make up three-quarters of the stars in our galaxy and are abundant near the Solar System. “Ross 508 b is the first successful detection of a super-Earth using only near-infrared spectroscopy. Before this, in detecting low-mass planets such as super-Earths, near-infrared observations alone were not accurate enough and verification with high-precision line-of-sight velocity measurements in visible light is necessary.This study shows that IRD-SSP alone is capable of detecting planets and clearly demonstrates the advantage of IRD-SSP in its ability to search with high precision even for late-type red dwarfs that are too faint to be observed with visible light,” says Dr. Hiroki Harakawa (NAOJ Subaru Telescope), lead author of the discovery. Also read | Astronaut’s video of aurora over Earth’s horizon captured from space impresses people Their limited radiation helps extend the lifespan of such dwarf stars, but they are considered critical targets for investigating life in the Universe. These stars have a surface temperature below 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Currently, Proxima Centauri b is the only other exoplanet orbiting the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. According to the researchers, the planet probably has an elliptical orbit. Its orbital period, or period of revolution, is just 10.8 days, NASA’s Exoplanet tweet said. “While today’s telescopes cannot directly image the planet due to its proximity to the central star. In the future, it will be one of the life-searching targets of 30-meter-class telescopes,” the team said. “It has been 14 years since IRD development began. We have continued our development and research with the hope of finding a planet just like Ross 508 b. We are committed to making new discoveries,” Professor Bun’ei Sato, the director said the IRD-SSP researcher.
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