59 new planets have been discovered in our neighborhood

The search for habitable planets outside the solar system continues! Thanks to special missions like KeplerAnd male goatAnd And HubbleThe number of confirmed exoplanets that have exploded in the last 15 years (with 5,272 confirmed And counting!). At the same time, the next generation of advanced telescopes, spectrometers, and imaging technologies will allow astronomers to study exoplanet atmospheres more closely. In short, the field is shifting from discovery to characterization, which allows astronomers to more stringently limit habitability.

The goal is to find potentially habitable “Earth-like” planets around this dim star Calar Alto high-resolution search for M dwarf with near-infrared Exoarts and Echelle Spectrographs (Carmenes), located at Calar Alto Observatory in spanish. In a study appearing in Astronomy and astrophysics Today, Carmen Union published data (data release1) data from about 20,000 observations taken between 2016 and 2020. Among measurements obtained from a cool 362 nearby stars, DR1 contains data about 59 new planets.

The CARMEN instrument is a 3.5-meter telescope-mounted optical and infrared spectrometer and one of the most advanced planetary instruments in the world using the radial velocity method. Also known as Doppler Spectroscopy, this method consists of measuring the light from distant stars with a spectrometer to look for signatures of redshift and blueshift – which indicate if a planet is moving back and forth. This motion indicates the presence of gravitational forces acting on the star (i.e. the system of orbiting planets) and can yield accurate mass estimates.

The Carmen consortium that designed and built the instrument involved more than 200 scientists and engineers from 11 Spanish and German institutions. This includes Institut Astronomi Max Planck (MPI), and Institute of Spatial Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), dan Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC), and Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC), and Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), and Göttingen Institute of Astrophysics (IAG), and Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), and Center for Astrobiology (Drinking, Drinking) dan Spanish-German Astronomical Center (WHAT).

As of 2015, the consortium’s goal is to search for terrestrial-type exoplanets around the nearest red dwarf star. Since then, it has become a CARMENES tool multiplied The known number of exoplanets around the nearest M-type star using the radial velocity method. The 59 exoplanets they identified between 2016 and 2019 were either new discoveries or confirmations of previously discovered candidates, including 6 Jupiter-like gas giants, 10 Neptune-like gas giants, and 43 Earths and super-Earths. Ten of these last planets have been found orbiting within the habitable zone around the star.

“Since starting Carmen, they have re-analyzed 17 known planets and discovered and confirmed 59 new planets around stars near our solar system, significantly contributing to the expansion of the population of nearby exoplanets,” said Dr. Ignation. Ribas, researcher at ICE-CSIC and director of the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) who led the study, at MPIA recently pers conference.

“To determine the presence of planets around stars, we observe them at least 50 times,” added Juan Carlos Morales, IEEC researcher at ICE-CSIC. “Although the first round of data has been published to provide access to the scientific community, observations are still ongoing.”

This paper is published in Astronomy and astrophysics This is the 100th study produced by the CARMEN Consortium, demonstrating the success of the project in detecting exoplanets around faint, low-mass stars. Between 2016 and 2019, Carmens observed nearly half of all near-M-type stars in two near-infrared wavelength ranges — 0.52 to 0.96 micrometers and 0.96 to 1.71 micrometers — some of which can only be observed from southern hemisphere. In addition, the spectra they obtain provide information about the atmospheres of stars and their planets, which is important for characterization.

The consortium team hopes the publication of this first big data set will spur further research and discovery. Experts are also using visible light data from surveyed stars to improve infrared data processing at Carmine. Once this information is published, astronomers will have another large observational data set to work with. Meanwhile, the consortium made more observations of the same star through it Carmin Plus Legacywhich started in 2021 and is expected to continue until the end of 2023.

The Carmen consortium plans to survey about 300 late main sequence stars M5V – a red dwarf sun roughly 0.162 times as massive as the Sun. The ultimate goal is to detect up to two million Earth-like planets orbiting within the habitable zone of M-type stars. This would go a long way towards resolving the debate about whether life can survive under “red skies,” which are still very high. debated. .

Further reading: piaAnd Astronomy and astrophysics