“Astronomers say the marshmallow planet is the smoothest exoplanet ever found where it orbits a red dwarf star.”
KENDARI TELISIK.ID – Astronomers have found a planet that has been identified as having a density like a marshmallow. This marshmallow planet adds to the series of unique objects in the universe.
Cited by Dailystar.co.uk, astronomers say the marshmallow planet is the smoothest exoplanet ever found where it orbits a red dwarf star.
Astronomers had previously suspected that worlds with significant gas envelopes could wrest most of their atmospheres from near-orbiting planets.
Astronomical observations, including the NASA-funded NEID radial velocity instrument, on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, NSF’s NOIRLab program.
Named TOI-3757 b, this exoplanet is the softest gas giant planet ever found around such a star. The planet is located in the constellation Auriga l’Auriga about 580 light years from Earth.
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According to planetary astronomer Shubham Kanodia of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, giant planets around red dwarfs have traditionally been considered difficult to form.
“So far we haven’t had a planetary sample large enough to find a nearby gaseous planet in a robust way,” he said.
Given that red dwarfs are the most numerous stars in the Milky Way, and are expected to live trillions of years, their long lifespan and large numbers mean that life could exist on planets orbiting red dwarfs.
Astronomers state that TOI-3757 b’s extremely low density is due to two factors, the first being related to the planet’s rocky core. The gas giants are thought to have started out as a huge rocky core about ten times the mass of Earth, where they quickly attracted large amounts of nearby gas to form the gas giants we see today.
Planet TOI-3757b has a lower abundance of heavy elements than other M dwarfs with gas giants, and this may have led to slower rock core formation, delaying the onset of gas accretion and thus affecting density. overall of the planet.
A postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University, Jessica Libby-Roberts, said the second factor was the planet’s orbit, which was considered slightly elliptical. There are times when it is closer to its star than at other times, resulting in substantial warming which can cause the planet’s atmosphere to swell.
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“Potential future observations of the planet’s atmosphere using NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope could help explain its bloated nature,” Jessica said.
This discovery highlights the importance of NEID in its ability to confirm several candidate exoplanets currently discovered by NASA’s TESS mission, providing an important target for the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to track and begin characterizing their atmospheres.
This in turn will tell astronomers where the planets came from and how they formed, as well as potentially habitable ones, which could possibly support life. (C)
Author: Nur Khumairah Sholeha Hasan
Publisher: Haerani Hambali
