{"id":25344,"date":"2022-09-08T11:21:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=25344"},"modified":"2022-09-08T11:21:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:21:50","slug":"potentially-habitable-super-earth-discovered-with-speculoos-telescopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/potentially-habitable-super-earth-discovered-with-speculoos-telescopes\/25344\/","title":{"rendered":"Potentially habitable super-Earth discovered with SPECULOOS telescopes"},"content":{"rendered":"
LP 890-9, also known as TOI-4306 or SPECULOOS-2, is a small, cool star situated around 100 light-years from our planet and is the second coolest star in which super-Earth planets have been detected, following the famous TRAPPIST-1.<\/p>\n
The first super-Earth \u2013 LP 890-9b (or TOI-4306b) \u2013 is the innermost in the system and was first identified by NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission dedicated to locating exoplanets orbiting nearby stars.<\/p>\n
LP 890-9b is around 30% larger than Earth and completes an orbit of its star in a mere 2.7 days. The researchers utilised their ground-based\u00a0SPECULOOS\u00a0(Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescopes to confirm and characterise this planet and probe the system for other planets TESS may have missed.<\/p>\n
Laetitia Delrez, an astrophysicist at the University of Li\u00e8ge and the leader of the study, said: \u201cTESS searches for exoplanets using the transit method, by monitoring the brightness of thousands of stars simultaneously, looking for slight dimmings that could be caused by planets passing in front of their stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, a follow-up with ground-based telescopes is often necessary to confirm the planetary nature of the detected candidates and to refine the measurements of their sizes and orbital properties.\u201d<\/p>\n
This follow-up is essential for cold stars like LP 890-9, as they emit the majority of their light in the near-infrared, for which TESS has limited sensitivity. Contrastingly, SPECULOOS telescopes are optimised to observe these types of stars with high precision as their cameras are extremely sensitive to infrared.<\/p>\n
Micha\u00ebl Gillon, FNRS Senior Research Associate, co-director of the Astrobiology research unit at ULi\u00e8ge and principal investigator of the SPECULOOS project, commented: \u201cThe goal of SPECULOOS is to search for potentially habitable terrestrial planets transiting the smallest and coolest stars in the solar neighbourhood, such as the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, which we discovered in 2016 thanks to a pilot project with our TRAPPIST-South telescope.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis strategy is motivated by the fact that such planets are particularly well suited to detailed studies of their atmospheres and the search for possible chemical traces of life with large observatories, such as the\u00a0JWST.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n The SPECULOOS telescopes have not only confirmed the first super-Earth planet but have also identified an unknown second. This planet, called LP 890-9c (renamed SPECULOOS-2c by the ULi\u00e8ge researchers), is 40% larger than Earth and has an orbital period of 8.5 days. This orbital period places the super-Earth in the habitable zone of its star.<\/p>\nFindings from SPECULOOS<\/h3>\n