This Neptune-like planet has a dense ecosystem and might actually have a tail

It is one thing to find planets outside the solar system. So far, we have found more than 4,000 exoplanets, but it is another thing to determine whether they are habitable or have an atmosphere. This is why it is exciting when researchers discover an exoplanet with a rich atmosphere, as a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of New Mexico did recently.

The planet TOI-1231b is slightly smaller than Neptune and orbits a type of star commonly known as a red dwarf. Using tools such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Planet Finder Spectrograph (PFS) at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, researchers were able to extract information about the planet’s size and properties.

“Working with a great group of astronomers around the world, we were able to gather the data needed to characterize the receiving star and measure the radius and mass of this planet,” said lead author Jennifer Burt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“These values, in turn, allow us to calculate the total density of the planet and guess what it is made of. TOI-1231b is very similar to Neptune in size and density, so we think it has such a large gas atmosphere. “

An thrilling characteristic of this planet is that it’s miles fairly cool with a temperature of 330 Kelvin (one hundred forty tiers Fahrenheit), this means that it can have water clouds in its ecosystem.

“TOI-1231b is one of the few different planets we understand of in a comparable length and temperature range, so destiny observations of this new planet will permit us to decide how frequently (or infrequently) water clouds shape mild worlds round them. stated Burt.

Due to the low density of the planet, the researchers concluded that there has been an surroundings there. “TOI-1231b’s low density shows that it’s miles surrounded via way of means of a large surroundings as opposed to a rocky planet.

But the composition and quantity of this atmosphere is unknown! “said co-author Diana Dragomir. TOI-1231b may also have a big hydrogen or hydrogen-helium atmosphere, or a denser water vapor atmosphere.”

It also means that the planet may have a strange trait: a tail. According to NASA, due to the speed at which the star system moves away from Earth, it is possible to see hydrogen disappear from the planet’s atmosphere and form a tail in space that can be detected with instruments like Hubble.

In addition, the planet provides a useful starting point for understanding the planets in our own solar system. Most of the planets discovered with the help of modern instruments are much hotter, so this cool planet is a close by contrast.

“One of the most exciting results from the last two decades of exoplanet research is that no new planetary system we have discovered looks like our own solar system,” said Burt.

“They’re full of Earth-sized planets and Neptune, whose orbits are plenty shorter than Mercury’s, so we don’t have neighborhood examples to examine them with. This new planet we’ve found continues to be weird – however it’s one step towards turning into our planet withinside the neighborhood.

Compared to maximum of the transiting planets found so far, which frequently have burning temperatures of loads or lots of degrees, TOI-1231b is downright cool. “

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