New ultra-hot Neptune-sized exoplanet discovered

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new exoplanet. The newly discovered alien planet, named TOI-3261b, is roughly the same size as Neptune and has an equilibrium temperature of over 1,700 K. The discovery was reported in a research paper. Published July 5th Preprint Server arXiv.

To date, TESS has identified more than 7,200 exoplanet candidates (TESS Objects of Interest, TOIs), of which 482 have been confirmed. Since its launch in April 2018, the satellite has surveyed around 200,000 of the brightest stars in the Sun’s vicinity, aiming to search for planets passing through our solar system, from small rocky planets to gas giants.

Another TOI monitored by TESS was recently identified by a group of astronomers led by Emma Navier of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. They found that the transit signal identified in the light curve of TOI-3261 is of type K. Main sequence stars Approx. 972 Light years It is caused by a planet far away.

“Multiple independent detection methods confirm that TOI-3261 b is a planet, and ground-based observatories have found a targeted transit signal that reproduces the signal first observed by TESS,” the researchers explained.

The radius of TOI-3261 b is about 3.82 times that of Earth, just 2% smaller than Neptune. Exoplanets Its mass is very large for its size, about 30.3 times that of the Earth, and its bulk density is high at 3.0 g/cm.³.

TOI-3261 b orbits its star at a distance of 0.017 AU with a period of 0.88 days, which makes it classified as an Ultra Short Period Planet (USP) and the fourth known Neptune-sized USP to date. Furthermore, the planet is located 1.5 km from the star, Effective Temperature The value of about 5,070 K suggests that this exoplanet is extremely hot, with the equilibrium temperature estimated to be at the level of 1,722 K.

Based on the data collected, the astronomers speculate that TOI-3261 b retains a gaseous envelope that could have once contained a water-rich central core. They estimate that this gaseous envelope makes up about 5% of the planet’s total mass, the second-highest percentage of any known Neptune-sized USP.

TOI-3261 has a spectral type of K1.5 V, is approximately 13% smaller than the Sun, and has a low mass. The star is estimated to be 6.5 billion years old and has a metallicity of 0.11 Dex.

In summarizing their results, the authors note that TOI-3261 b is an ideal target for follow-up observations of its atmosphere, a study that could potentially be carried out using space observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

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