Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system. The green region represents the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the planetary surface. The planetary orbit is shown as a blue line. Posted on 09/01/2022 10:59:38 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system. The green region represents the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the planetary surface. The planetary orbit is shown as a blue line.
A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be conducive for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface, but other times it wouldn’t.
The relatively small size and low luminosity of red dwarf stars means the habitable zone of this exoplanet is very close to the star, Ross 508. Therefore, the ever-changing conditions and likely high radiation environment doesn’t bode well for any type of habitability on this world, especially since this planet zips around its star every 11 days. The planet is about four times the mass of the Earth.
The Subaru Telescope.
This exoplanet is the first to be discovered by a new infrared spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. The Subaru Telescope is the flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
Red dwarf stars, also called M dwarf or M-type stars, are the smallest and coolest kind of stars on the main sequence and they are also the most numerous, accounting for three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. But because of their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs cannot be easily observed. They are very faint in visible light due to their low surface temperature of less than 4000 degrees.
The astronomers who discovered Ross 508b say that exoplanet discoveries around cool M dwarfs have been limited, as well. Previous planet searches using visible light spectrometers have only discovered three planets around very nearby red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri b. That’s why astronomers are so excited about the new InfraRed Doppler instrument on Subaru.
“Ross 508b is the first successful detection of a super-Earth using only near-infrared spectroscopy,” said Dr. Hiroki Harakawa, the lead author of the discovery paper, in a press release. “Prior to this, in the detection of low-mass planets such as super-Earths, near-infrared observations alone were not accurate enough, and verification by high-precision line-of-sight velocity measurements in visible light was necessary. This study shows that IRD-SSP alone is capable of detecting planets, and clearly demonstrates the advantage of IRD-SSP in its ability to search with a high precision even for late-type red dwarfs that are too faint to be observed with visible light.”
In total, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. Exoplanet hunters say that understanding what makes planets habitable – or not — is of keen interest to those who study astrobiology, which studies how life originated on Earth and where it might exist in the Solar System and beyond.
Astronomers say the new infrared instrument offers a better chance to find more exoplanets candidates around red dwarfs, and more opportunities to investigate the possibility of life on other varied and unusual worlds.
May be the problem Florida and Texas have?
Ah, the X-File’s elusive shapeshifting planet!
Earth 🌎🌍?
In general, red dwarf stars generate significantly less heat and visible light than our own sun.
I am thinking the habitable zone of a red dwarf solar system must also be significantly smaller.
San Francisco 50 years ago, then San Francisco now. New York in Giuliani years, and then New York in Wilhelm years. Chicago ...
[...likely high radiation environment doesn’t bode well for any type of habitability on this world]
So they only found another uninhabitable planet?
Bullshito!
Possibly a “frost and fire” planet? Just my 2
I dated a woman like that once.
Why would the “habital zone” not be essentially spherical shape?
(The definition of “habital zone” seems pretty squirrely to me, anyway.)
Most orbits start out as non-circular ellipses but all orbits end up that way because no celestial body is perfectly spherical. Tiny deviations from a spherical shape (or even irregularities in gravitational pull caused by nutation, or variability in composition) act irregularly on the path of anything orbiting that body, and over millennia take orbits out of circular. The only satellites with relatively circular orbits are artificial ones that receive frequent course adjustments.
A planet outside any habitable zone is (theoretically) uninhabitable but just because a planet is in a habitable zone doesn't mean it's habitable, only that it's (strictly speaking) not un-inhabitable.
Thanks LibWhacker.
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Ooops, my mistake! The habital zone is not essentially spherical in shape. It is a torus, i.e.,it is shaped like a tire (see that greenish region in the first pic at the top of the page). If your planet orbits too close to the star and never enters that torus, it'll be too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface and life as we know it couldn't exist there. But if your planet's elliptical orbit is entirely within that torus, and has water on it, there is at least some chance it is inhabited. No one knows just how good that chance is; there isn't enough data, etc., I'm sure you know the argument.
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