Heat Saturn-sized exoplanet came upon with TESS

TESS mild curves of TOI-4994 at 30 (best), 10 (heart), and a couple of (backside) minute cadences, combining 6 other sectors. Credit score: Rodriguez et al., 2024.

The usage of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite tv for pc (TESS), a global workforce of astronomers has detected a brand new exoplanet orbiting big name. The newfound alien international, designated TOI-4994 b, is heat and quite smaller than Saturn. The discovering was once reported in a analysis paper revealed Dec. 3 at the pre-print server arXiv.

So far, TESS has recognized greater than 7,300 candidate exoplanets (TESS Items of Pastime, or TOI), of which 571 had been showed thus far. Since its release in April 2018, the satellite tv for pc has been accomplishing a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars close to the solar with the purpose of attempting to find transiting exoplanets—starting from small, rocky worlds to gaseous giants.
Now, a bunch of astronomers led by way of Romy Rodriguez of the Harvard–Smithsonian Middle for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has showed every other TOI monitored by way of TESS.
They recognized a transit sign within the mild curve of TOI-4994—a G-type big name concerning the measurement and mass of the solar, situated some 1,079 mild years away. The planetary nature of this sign was once showed by way of follow-up observations the usage of ground-based telescopes, together with the Las Cumbres Observatory International Telescope (LCOGT).
“A transit-like sign with a length of 21.5 days was once first detected in Sector 12 of TESS and therefore showed with follow-up photometry from the bottom,” the researchers defined.
The newly detected planet has a radius of about 0.76 Jupiter radii and its mass was once estimated to be 0.28 Jupiter plenty, which yields a Saturn-like density at a degree of 0.78 g/cm3. TOI-4994 b orbits its host each and every 21.5 days at a distance of 0.15 AU from it, and its equilibrium temperature is a few 717.6 Okay.

Due to this fact, the homes of TOI-4994 b are very similar to the ones of Saturn and will also be categorised as a heat Saturn exoplanet. Typically, the selection of recognized heat Saturns remains to be slightly small as not up to 20 planets of this kind had been came upon thus far, which makes TOI-4994 b a treasured addition to this pattern.
The authors of the paper word that the homes of TOI-4994 b additionally counsel a historical past formed by way of planet–planet scattering and a imaginable merger. Alternatively, additional observations are required as a way to verify this. They upload that the planet is a great candidate for follow-up stellar obliquity measurements.
On the subject of the guardian big name, TOI-4994 (sometimes called TIC 277128619), its radius is roughly 1.05 sun radii, whilst its mass is analogous to that of the solar. The big name, which is estimated to be 6.3 billion years outdated, has an efficient temperature of five,640 Okay and its metallicity is at a degree of 0.165 dex.

Additional information:
Romy Rodriguez Martinez et al, Discovery and Characterization of an Eccentric, Heat Saturn Transiting the Sun Analog TOI-4994, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2412.02769

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Heat Saturn-sized exoplanet came upon with TESS (2024, December 11)
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