A world staff of planetary scientists has characterised a number of the options of an exoplanet named HD-207496-b, positioned roughly 138 mild years from Earth. Of their paper accepted for publication within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and at the moment posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group describes their examine of the exoplanet and the 2 theories relating to its seemingly make-up.
The exoplanet HD-207496-b was found as half of a bigger effort to characterize bare core planets. As such, the staff was analyzing HARPS spectroscopic observations of HD-207496—a vibrant okay dwarf. By including TESS photometry knowledge, the group was capable of measure the celebrities’ brightness and wavelength, and by finding out the exoplanet’s transit traits, the staff was capable of calculate its interval, mass, radius and density. That led them to a little bit of a conundrum—was the exoplanet gaseous or watery?
The researchers calculated that the exoplanet had a radius 2.25 occasions that of Earth, with an orbit of 6.44 days. And it had a mass that was roughly 6.1 occasions Earth’s. Simple arithmetic confirmed that the exoplanet had a density of three.27 grams per cubic centimeter, which is lower than that of Earth.
This, the analysis staff deduced, means that the planet has a rocky core lined by principally water or gasoline. Intrigued by the probabilities, the group created a mannequin to assist them higher estimate the make-up of the exoplanet. However the mannequin was not capable of nail down its particular properties—it instructed that it may very well be an exoplanet that was water-rich, or gas-rich, or some mixture of each.
The analysis staff additionally found that evaporation modeling confirmed that if the exoplanet has an environment wealthy in helium and hydrogen, then its present state is probably going momentary. Gravity from its star will seemingly pull the ambiance from the exoplanet throughout the subsequent half-billion years. In addition they word the likelihood that such gases have already evaporated, which would depart the exoplanet with nothing however an ocean.
The staff means that HD-207496-b seemingly has a mixture of gasoline and water and likewise notes that future examine of the planet is prone to result in a greater understanding of its make-up.
Extra data:
S. C. C. Barros et al, The younger mini-Neptune HD 207496b that’s both a unadorned core or on the verge of turning into one, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.03775
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