An international group of astronomers has discovered two exoplanets orbiting a nearby dwarf star known as TOI-2095, which is 137 light-years from the Sun.
Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers discovered the two exoplanets orbiting the dwarf star at short orbital periods.
According to the results published in the journal arXiv, the new celestial bodies, called TOI-2095 b and TOI-2095 c, belong to the category of “super-Earths”. Their sizes range from 1 to 4 Earth radii.
The TESS satellite is surveying about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun, with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets, ranging from small rocky worlds to gas giants.
To date, 6,400 exoplanet candidates (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI) have been identified, of which 330 have been confirmed so far.
Now, a team of astronomers led by Felipe Morgas of the University of La Laguna, Spain, reports that two exoplanets detected by TESS have been confirmed.
By making optical observations and radial velocity measurements, they found that the transit signals in TOI-2095’s light curve are planetary in nature.
According to the study, the TOI-2095 b planet is about 25% larger than Earth and has an orbit of 17.66 days. It is closest to its host star, at a distance of about 0.1 astronomical unit (AU), and has an equilibrium temperature of 73.85 degrees Celsius (347 K), while Its mass is estimated to not exceed 4.1 Earth masses.
As for the second planet in the TOI-2095 c system, it has a radius of about 1.33 Earth’s radii, and it orbits its host every 28.17 days, at a distance of about 0.137 astronomical units from it. TOI-2095 c has an equilibrium temperature of approximately 23.85 °C (297 K), and its maximum mass has been calculated to be 7.4 Earth masses.
The host star, TOI-2095, is about 56% smaller in mass than the Sun. It is a red dwarf star of spectral class M2.5 V, has an effective temperature of 3,485 °C (3,759 K), and metallicity (abundances of iron and hydrogen) at -0.24. The star is estimated to be at least a billion years old.
The paper’s authors note that the newly discovered exoplanets are close to the inner edge of TOI-2095’s habitable zone and that their parameters make them attractive targets for further follow-up observations.
