With every new exoplanet that astronomers find, there’s at least one more slight and theoretical chance of finding extraterrestrial life. More exoplanets would obviously mean more places to look for any little green men with pointy years, right?
It’s amazing how astronomers keep finding more and more planets beyond our own Solar System (aka exoplanets). Not until many centuries ago were scientists not entirely sure that such planets existed at all. They were theorizing their existence, though, but there was no guarantee that they really existed somewhere in the vast ocean of space.
NASA’s TESS locates the TOI-530b exoplanet
The exoplanet designated as TOI-530b is the newfound object by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), according to Phys.org. The planet is almost the same size as Jupiter, which makes it a giant planet. The gas giant from our Solar System is so big that 1,300 planets of the same size as Earth would fit inside it.
The M dwarf star known as TOI-530 has shown a transit signal near it. In their study paper, the researchers wrote, as quoted by Phys.org:
We report the discovery of TOI-530b, a transiting giant planet around an M0.5V dwarf, delivered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. … We verify the planetary nature of the transit signals by combining ground-based multi-wavelength photometry, high resolution spectroscopy from SPIRou [SpectroPolarimètre InfraROUge] as well as high-angular-resolution imaging.
The newfound planetary system is located far away from Earth: 481 light-years. The newfound exoplanet performs a full rotation around its parent star in 6.39 days. Also, the planet is located at 0.052 AU from the star. One AU is equivalent to the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Therefore, if you’re thinking of spending a vacation on the planetary system, you know where you have to go. Hopefully, you’ll find a way to travel such a distance in a reasonable amount of time.
Tommy’s hobby has always been playing video games. He enjoys competing in video games tournaments and writing about his experience. It’s not a big surprise that he mostly covers the latest trends from the gaming industry.