Two Neptune-sized exoplanets discovered using Tess – Times of India

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Two Neptune-sized exoplanets discovered using Tess – Times of India

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NEW DELHI: A multinational team of astronomers announced the discovery of two new exoplanets circling a brilliant star known as TOI-5126, using Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), Phys Org reported.
“We report the discovery and validation of two planets around the bright F star TOI-5126,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
The size of the newly discovered extraterrestrial worlds is comparable to that of the planet closest to the sun.
The discovery was made public on October 13 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Nearly 6,900 candidate exoplanets have been discovered by Tess so far (referred to as TOI or Tess Objects of Interest), of which 395 have been verified.
In order to look for transiting exoplanets, the spacecraft has been scouring around 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun since its launch in April 2018.
The exoplanet TOI-5126 b, which is located closer to the star and has a radius of about 4.74 Earth radii, is roughly 22% larger than Neptune.
At a distance of about 0.065 AU from the host, the planet completes a circle around it every 5.46 days.
The authors of the article categorized TOI-5126 b as a hot super-Neptune because the equilibrium temperature of the planet was determined to be 1,442 K.
The study’s second planet, TOI-5126 c, is roughly 0.144 AU away from its parent star and has an orbital period of around 17.9 days.
According to the findings, TOI-5126 c is almost as big as Neptune and has a radius of 3.86 Earth radii. The planet is categorized as a warm Neptune and has an equilibrium temperature of 971 K.
The newfound alien worlds’ masses have not yet been quantified. However, scientists believe that the projected masses for TOI-5126 b and TOI-5126 c are 21 and 18 Earth masses, respectively, based on the mass-radius relationship models.
The host star TOI-5126 is approximately 24% bigger and more massive than the sun. It is thought to be 800 million years old, is 525 light years away, and has an effective temperature of 6,150 K.
The researchers stressed in their final notes that additional research into the TOI-5126 planetary system could aid in our understanding of the differences in atmospheric composition between a hot super-Neptune and a warm Neptune.



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