According to a statement by the American space research organization NASA, two distant aquatic exoplanets have been discovered with the help of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The bizarre planets of the system with catalog number Kepler-138 are completely different from the planets of the Solar System.
Special exoplanets have been discovered around a red dwarf
The two distant aquatic planets were discovered in the constellation Lant (Lyra) as part of NASA’s exoplanet research program. According to a statement from the space research organization, the two unusual celestial bodies orbit a red dwarf star located 218 light-years from Earth.
Red dwarfs are small, relatively cool stars with masses ranging from 7.5% to half the mass of the Sun. (Stars smaller than 7.5 solar masses are called brown dwarfs, due to and.) The surface temperature of red dwarfs is below 3500 kelvin,
therefore their light is at most 1/10 of the luminosity of the Sun,
and most of them can only be detected in the infrared range.
According to NASA’s statement, the watery worlds orbiting the red dwarf look nothing like the Earth-type planets of the Solar System.
A Nature astronomy Members of the planetary system with catalog number Kepler-138 are made of water and don’t have a solid crust, according to a study published in a scientific journal on Dec. 15.
Bizarre aquatic worlds, whose thick crust is formed by a layer of high-pressure water
The Kepler-138 system was observed by a research team led by Caroline Piaulet of the Institute for Exoplanet Research of the University of Montreal with the help of the two space telescopes of the American space agency, NASA, Hubble and Spitzer.
The three exoplanets of the Kepler-138 system were already known before,
but it has only now been discovered that two of these are composed of water.
According to the researchers’ models, both planets could have a larger core made of metals and rock, with a thick crust of high-pressure water on top.
According to NASA’s analysis, the high surface temperatures of the planets indicate
that their atmosphere may consist of hot water vapour.
These are the first unusual planets discovered whose mass consists of water. NASA discovered the 5,000th exoplanet this year, with the number rising to more than 5,200 by the end of the year.
Extrasolar planets, or exoplanets for short, are planets that orbit stars other than the Solar System.
Since for a long time there was no suitable technique for their discovery, their existence was only hypothetical until the 1990s. However, thanks to high-performance telescopes and space telescopes, as well as increasingly accurate surveying techniques, the number of newly discovered exoplanets is steadily increasing.
