Scientists Amateurs were able to find two new gaseous planets, as part of a project called “Planet Hunters TESS”, which was broadcast by NASA, which allows ordinary people to help astronomers and other space researchers identify new celestial bodies.
The planets – objectively named “B” and “C” – are much larger than Earth and are closer to their star, known as “HD 152843”, with a mass similar to that of our Sun, but 1.5 times more massive. Brighter. It is about 352 light years away.
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Planet B is 3.4 times larger than Tera – Which puts it in proportions similar to Neptune. Complete a circle around his star in 12 Earth days. Planet C, the farthest, is 5.8 times larger than our home – a little smaller than Saturn, for comparison. It completes its incubation between 19 and 35 Earth days.
If they were located in our solar system, they would be closer to the sun than either of our planets: Mercury and Venus, our closest neighbors to our star, have 88 and 225 days, respectively.
The Planet Hunters TESS project uses public data provided by the satellite of the same name, which was launched by NASA in April 2018 and which has identified, so far, more than 100 outer planets, plus 2,600 other candidates whose confirmation is pending.
Since the data is public, anyone with some understanding of astronomical research or cosmology can search for information and data that will lead to the discovery of new celestial bodies. Essentially, the satellite analyzes its “light curves,” i.e. how much bright stars it can see.
If any of these light curves show a decrease in brightness, it could mean that an object – such as a planet, for example – has passed through its orbit (a phenomenon called “transit”). If several people report similar traffic events in a very close area, an AI algorithm collects this information and sends it to NASA for further analysis. Human vision is very important here, since independent computer systems easily misidentify it – for them, any transit event is a planet in orbit, but in fact, these events can mean a lot.
“This is why so many candidate exoplanets are lost, and why the science for ordinary citizens is so fascinating,” Nora Eisner, a doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said in a statement to CNN. In the current example, transit events related to the star HD 152843 were identified and sent to NASA researchers, who confirmed that at least two of them came from Planet B, and one from Planet C.
Confirmation of their planetary status came from later research, which used a method known as “radial velocity metering,” which assesses distortions of light in stars caused by planets passing in their path. Now, studies continue to determine the masses of each planet.
Although we already know about their gas compositions and temperatures too hot to support life, future observations of planets B and C, which will be made by the James Webb Space Telescope, will determine if they have their own atmospheres, and if so, They are finished.
James Webb Space Telescope It will be released in October 2021.
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