Exoplanetology: Exoplanets & Exomoons

A Nearby Transiting Rocky Exoplanet That Is Suitable For Atmospheric Investigation

By Keith Cowing
astro-ph.EP
March 8, 2021
Filed under
A Nearby Transiting Rocky Exoplanet That Is Suitable For Atmospheric Investigation
TESS Sector 23 TPF and a false-color, 3×3 arcmin2 SDSS9 image of Gliese 486. (A) The TPF electron counts are color-coded by flux, the orange bordered pixels are used in SAP, and the scale is 21 arcsec pixel-1 . (B) A green square in the g’r’i’ SDSS9 (52) composition (epoch of observation: J2003.32) marks the location of the star in early 2020. In both fields of view, Gliese 486 is the brightest star

Spectroscopy of transiting exoplanets can be used to investigate their atmospheric properties and habitability.

Combining radial velocity (RV) and transit data provides additional information on exoplanet physical properties. We detect a transiting rocky planet with an orbital period of 1.467 days around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 486. The planet Gliese 486 b is 2.81 Earth masses and 1.31 Earth radii, with uncertainties of 5%, as determined from RV data and photometric light curves.

The host star is at a distance of ~8.1 parsecs, has a J-band magnitude of ~7.2, and is observable from both hemispheres of Earth. On the basis of these properties and the planet’s short orbital period and high equilibrium temperature, we show that this terrestrial planet is suitable for emission and transit spectroscopy.

T. Trifonov, J. A. Caballero, J. C. Morales, A. Seifahrt, I. Ribas, A. Reiners, J. L. Bean, R. Luque, H. Parviainen, E. Pallé, S. Stock, M. Zechmeister, P. J. Amado, G. Anglada-Escudé3, M. Azzaro, T. Barclay, V. J. S. Béjar, P. Bluhm, N. Casasayas-Barris, C. Cifuentes, K. A. Collins, K. I. Collins, M. Cortés-Contreras, J. de Leon, S. Dreizler, C. D. Dressing, E. Esparza-Borges, N. Espinoza, M. Fausnaugh, A. Fukui, A. P. Hatzes, C. Hellier, Th. Henning, C. E. Henze, E. Herrero, S. V. Jeffers, J. M. Jenkins, E. L. N. Jensen, A. Kaminski, D. Kasper, D. Kossakowski, M. Kürster, M. Lafarga, D. W. Latham, A. W. Mann, K. Molaverdikhani, D. Montes, B. T. Montet, F. Murgas, N. Narita, M. Oshagh, V. M. Passegger, D. Pollacco, S. N. Quinn, A. Quirrenbach, G. R. Ricker, C. Rodríguez López, J. Sanz-Forcada, R. P. Schwarz, A. Schweitzer, S. Seager, A. Shporer, M. Stangret, J. Stürmer, T. G. Tan, P. Tenenbaum, J. D. Twicken, R. Vanderspek, J. N. Winn

Comments: Published in Science
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
DOI: 10.1126/science.abd7645
Cite as: arXiv:2103.04950 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2103.04950v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Trifon Trifonov Ph.D.
[v1] Mon, 8 Mar 2021 18:12:41 UTC (6,224 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.04950
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻