space telescope TESS NASA has discovered another exoplanet similar to ours.

This is TOI 700e, which is about 100 light-years away and is 95% the size of the Earth, that is, slightly smaller, and probably also rocky.

This “second Earth” appears to be orbiting its star (a small, relatively cool M-type red dwarf) at a distance suitable for liquid water to exist and life to evolve.

System with potentially habitable planets

Astronomers have previously discovered three planets TOI b, c and d in the same system. The latter also moves in the habitable zone and resembles the Earth.

The researchers, led by astronomer Emily Gilbert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, made the announcement at an American Astronomical Society conference in Seattle, followed by publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This is one of the few systems known to us with many small and potentially habitable planets. This makes the TOI 700 system ideal for further study. “Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so it turns out that additional observations with TESS allow us to find smaller and smaller worlds,” Gilbert said.

Two Earth-sized exoplanets, TOI 700e and TOI 700d, were discovered by an astronomer orbiting a star in the southern sky via NASA’s TESS satellite. #Space hour#exoplanets

Through @Space.com

⏩https://t.co/fNrwPTBwlD

Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt pic.twitter.com/nqeKhdbnXi

— Diana🌜✨🔭 (@onlybeci) January 11, 2023

The star TOI 700 is located in the southern constellation Dorado, and in 2020 an Earth-like (and 20% larger) exoplanet d was discovered around it.

The innermost planet b, which is 90% the size of the Earth, has a year of ten days (time of one complete revolution around its parent star), c is 2.5 times the size of the Earth and has a year of 16 days, d has a year of 37 days, and in e 28 days.

TESS telescope

TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was launched in April 2018 and is currently NASA’s premier exoplanet hunter, having discovered 285 confirmed exoplanets and over 6,000 candidates to date. TOI stands for TESS Object of Interest.

Observations of the TOI 700 system by TESS, as well as other ground-based and space-based telescopes, continue. The TOI 700 system is the second most interesting astronomer after the nearest Trappist-1 system, 39.5 light-years from Earth, which has seven planets similar to our own.

Source: RES-IPE