M dwarf tagged posts

The boiling new world, which zips around its star at ultraclose range, is among the lightest exoplanets found to date. The TESS mission has discovered an ultra-short-period planet (USP) that is also super light. The planet is named GJ 367 b, and it orbits its star in just eight hours. The planet is about the size of Mars, and half as massive as the Earth, making it one of the lightest planets discovered to date.

Ultra-short-period planets are small, compact worlds that whip around their stars at close range, completing an orbit — and a single, scorching year — in less than 24 hours...

A planet observed crossing in front of, or transiting, a low-mass star has been determined to be about the size of Jupiter. While hundreds of Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered orbiting larger sun-like stars, it is rare to see these planets orbiting low-mass host stars and the discovery could help astronomers to better understand how these giant planets form.

“This is only the fifth Jupiter-sized planet transiting a low-mass star that has been observed and the first with such a long orbital period, which makes this discovery really exciting,” said Caleb Cañas, lead author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at Penn State and NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow.

Originally detected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) spacecraft, astronomers characterized ...