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Scientists have detected 85 potential exoplanets with temperatures that may be suitable for supporting life.
The exoplanet candidates found through Nasa’s TESS are comparable in size to Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.
TESS allows researchers to detect changes in the luminosity of stars, referred to as transits, caused by objects moving in front of them.
Typically, at least three observations of transits are required to detect an exoplanet in this manner, in order to ascertain its orbital period around its host star.
It’s very exciting to find these planets and to know that many of them may be in the right temperature zone to sustain life
In the recent research, scientists observed systems with only two transits, allowing them to identify planets with longer orbital periods and potentially uncover exoplanets with lower temperatures.
Out of the 85 possible exoplanets, they have orbits ranging from 20 to 700 days around their respective host stars. In comparison, the majority of exoplanets observed by TESS have much shorter orbital periods of 3-10 days.
Scientists have determined that certain planets have a sufficient distance from their host stars to potentially support life due to their suitable temperature range. This zone is referred to as the “habitable zone”.
The researchers are aiming to confirm the bodies as exoplanets in the future through additional observations.
Out of the 85 potential exoplanets, 60 are newly discovered and 25 have been found by separate research groups using varying methods in the TESS data.
Faith Hawthorn, PhD researcher at the University of Warwick, said: “We ran an initial algorithm searching for transits on a sample of 1.4 million stars.
“After a thorough evaluation, we narrowed down the selection to only 85 systems which seem to contain exoplanets that transit twice in the provided dataset.”
Professor Daniel Bayliss, who was also part of the research team, expressed his enthusiasm for the discovery of these planets and the possibility that some of them may have the ideal conditions to support life.
He stated, “In line with the cooperative nature of the TESS mission, we have also released our findings for public study, allowing astronomers from all over the world to analyze these extraordinary exoplanets more closely. Our intention is to foster additional research on these intriguing exoplanets.”
Dr. Sam Gill, the co-author of the research, pointed out that using only two transits to detect exoplanets is a smart method for identifying exoplanets with longer orbital periods in transit surveys. This approach enables us to discover planets that are significantly colder compared to what can be detected through conventional transit searches.
On Wednesday, the Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) published a research paper by Ms. Hawthorn from the University of Warwick, in collaboration with an international team.
Source: independent.co.uk
