A research team led by scientists from the Hubble Space Telescope of the American and European space agencies was able to confirm the existence of the closest Earth-sized planet orbiting a star other than the Sun, and the planet is located at a distance of only 22 light-years from Earth.
This planet, named “LTT 144 AC”, was first discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite in 2022, but scientists could not confirm its size at the time, and they thought it was a super-Earth with a mass equal to 1.54 times that of Earth.
However, with precise measurements of the data issued by the Hubble Telescope, it was found that this planet has a mass equal to only 1.07 times the mass of Earth, and accordingly it is close to it in size. It is a rocky planet, but it is very close to its star and revolves around it only once every few days, and its temperature reaches Its surface is about 260 degrees, according to the study published by this team in The Astrophysical Journal.
Planetary transits
Scientists access this data by crossing planets. To understand the idea, imagine that you are holding a pea between your two fingers, then you pass it in front of your bedroom lamp hanging on the ceiling. Here you will notice that the amount of light coming out of the lamp has decreased slightly with the passage of that pea.
Scientists arrive at this type of discovery through data on the transit of planets in front of a star observed by NASA. The same thing happens in planetary transit studies, where the telescope continues to monitor one of the stars for a period of time. If it notices a periodic decrease in its illumination, this means that a planet has passed in front of it, and it helps Data such as the speed of the transit and the amount of light decrease in determining the orbit and size of this planet.
Of course, this requires extreme accuracy that NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite does not have, which prompted researchers to use the Hubble Telescope to observe this star and confirm the exact size of the planet, according to an official statement issued by the Hubble Telescope.
Wondrous world
According to the study, the planet LTT 144 AC revolves around a red dwarf, which is one of the types of dwarf stars that have a mass much smaller than our sun. If the sun were the size of a football and white in color, then this star would be the size of a table tennis ball and red in color.
The strange thing is that this star is part of a system consisting of 3 red dwarf stars orbiting each other. If there was life on LTT 144 AC – which is completely unlikely – people there would see the sunrise 3 times and the sunset 3 times.
Because of its relative proximity to the sun, scientists hope to study this wondrous world in greater detail in the future, especially since the aforementioned transit method also allows scientists to study the planet’s atmosphere and carefully examine its components, and James Webb may contribute to this mission.
Source: Websites + NASA + European Space Agency
