NASA Discovers Six New Exoplanets

July 20, 2024

NASA has made big strides in its study of exoplanets by confirming six new ones, bringing the total number of them to 5,502. This is an important step toward knowing the universe and the possibility of life beyond Earth. Poltergeist and Phobetor, the first exoplanets found orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 in 1992, marked the start of the trip. By March 2022, the number of finds had sped past 5,000, showing how quickly the field was progressing.

New Exoplanets Overview

HD 36384 b: A super Jupiter circling a M giant star that is a lot bigger than our Sun.
TOI-198b: It might be rocky and is on the edge of the habitable zone of its star.
TOI-2095b and c are hot super-Earths that circle the same M dwarf star.
TOI-4860b is a “hot Jupiter” with a short orbital period of 1.52 days.
MWC 758c is a big protoplanet that is orbiting a young star and has a protoplanetary ring around it. It shows how planets are formed.

Detection Techniques

Several ways are used to find exoplanets:

Radial Velocity: Looks at how stars wobble because of planets circling them.
Transit Method: It measures how much sunlight dims as planets move across the path of their stars. Direct imaging was used to identify the MWC 758c.

Role of TESS and Other Telescopes

Since it was launched in 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has helped find many possible exoplanets. Spitzer, Hubble, and the James Webb Space Telescope are some of the other telescopes that have made important contributions to the study of exoplanets. NASA plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in May 2027. This telescope will have a coronagraph device for direct imaging. This technology could make it possible for projects like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would look for signs of life beyond Earth.

More About exoplanets

There are over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, which are worlds outside of our solar system. 51 Pegasi b, the first proven exoplanet, was found in 1995. The transit method is used to find most extrasolar planets by watching a star’s light dim as a planet moves across it. The Kepler Space Telescope found a huge number of possible planets. Circumbinary planets are exoplanets that go around two stars. Hot Jupiters, which are gas giants close to their stars, test ideas about how planets grow. Radial velocity and gravitational microlensing are two of the methods used in the study. TRAPPIST-1 has seven planets about the size of Earth. The idea goes back to ancient times when philosophers thought about places beyond our own.

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