A group of astronomers under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published , in which she announced the next achievement of a new mission to search for planets outside the solar system. Orbital Telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), On April 18, 2018, he discovered the smallest object in his short research mission - presumably a stone planet the size of our Earth.
The exoplanet HD 21749c orbits the star HD 8 with a period of about 21749 days. The HD 21749 system is 53 light years away from us. The star holds about 80% of the mass of the Sun. The planet's short orbital period around the host star means that temperatures on its surface can exceed 450 degrees Celsius. In our understanding, life on such a hot piece of stone is impossible. But this does not detract from the success of TESS. The search methodology and tools will develop, and astronomers expect to find dozens of exoplanets in a zone comfortable from the point of view of terrestrial life.
It should be said that the Kepler orbital telescope during its many years of work discovered 2662 exoplanets, many of which may be the size of the Earth. The mission of TESS is different. The TESS telescope studies nearby stars and, together with ground-based equipment in Chile (Planet Finder Spectrograph, PFS), allows you to determine the mass and even composition of the atmosphere of exoplanets with a certain degree of accuracy.
Over the course of two years, the TESS mission is expected to study over 200 star systems. Scientists expect that this will help discover more than 000 exoplanets. The satellite covers over 50% of the sky for 90 days. By the way, another exoplanet, HD 13,5b, has been discovered in the HD 21749 system. But this celestial body belongs to the βsub-Neptuneβ class, and TESS has already detected several such objects.
Source: 3dnews.ru