Four new 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets discovered

April 10, 2018

by Tomasz Nowakowski , Phys.org

Phase-folded unbinned HATSouth light curves for HATS-39 (upper left), HATS-40 (upper right), HATS-41 (lower left) and HATS-42 (lower right). Credit: Bento et al., 2018.

Four new "hot Jupiter" extrasolar planets have been detected as part of the Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network-South (HATSouth) exoplanet survey. The newly found alien worlds are generally similar in size, but vary widely in mass. The discovery is detailed in a paper published April 4 on the arXiv pre-print server.

HATSouth is a network of six astrograph telescope systems located in South America, Africa, and Australia. These telescopes are designed to detect transiting extrasolar planets in orbit around relatively bright stars visible from the Southern hemisphere. Since its launch in 2009, the network has already detected dozens of transiting exoplanets.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Joao Bento of the Australian National University (ANU), reports the finding of another exoplanets using HATSouth telescopes. They found transit signals in four stars, namely: HATS-39, HATS-40, HATS-41 and HATS-42. Afterward, the planetary nature of these signals was confirmed by follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations.

"In this paper we report the discovery and characterisation of four new transiting hot Jupiters from the HATSouth survey: HATS-39b, HATS-40b, HATS-41b and HATS-42b," the researchers wrote in the paper.

All four newly detected planets transit moderately bright dwarf stars of F-type and were classified as "hot Jupiters." Such extrasolar worlds are similar in characteristics to the solar system's biggest planet, with orbital periods of less than 10 days. They have high surface temperatures as they orbit their parent stars very closely.

With a mass of 0.63 Jupiter masses, HATS-39b is the least massive exoplanet of the newly found quartet. However, its radius—about 1.57 Jupiter radii—is larger than it should be, thus the researchers describe HATS-39b as an inflated planet. The exoworld orbits its host every 4.58 days at a distance of 0.06 AU, and its equilibrium temperature is 1,645 K.

HATS-40b is approximately 58.5 percent more larger and massive than Jupiter. It takes the planet about 3.26 days to fully orbit its parent star as it is separated from the host by 0.05 AU. The equilibrium temperature of this alien world is estimated to be around 2,100 K.

HATS-41b is the most interesting exoplanet reported in the paper. It is only 33 percent larger than Jupiter, but nearly 10 times more massive than our solar system's biggest planet. According to the researchers, it is one of the most massive "hot Jupiters" found to date and orbits the highest metallicity star to host a transiting planet. HATS-41b has an orbital period of 4.19 days, is located about 0.06 AU from the host, and has equilibrium temperature of 1,710 K.

When it comes to HATS-42b, it has a radius of 1.4 Jupiter radii and a mass of 1.88 Jupiter masses. It is separated from HATS-42 by approximately 0.037 AU and fully orbits it in 2.29 days. The equilibrium temperature of this planet is 1,856 K.

More information: HATS-39b, HATS-40b, HATS-41b, and HATS-42b: Three Inflated Hot Jupiters and a Super-Jupiter Transiting F Stars, arXiv:1804.01623 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/1804.01623

J Bento et al. HATS-39b, HATS-40b, HATS-41b, AND HATS-42b: THREE INFLATED HOT JUPITERS AND A SUPER-JUPITER TRANSITING F STARS, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty726

Abstract

We report the discovery of four transiting hot Jupiters from the HATSouth survey: HATS-39b, HATS-40b, HATS41b and HATS-42b. These discoveries add to the growing number of transiting planets orbiting moderately bright (12.5 < V < 13.7) F dwarf stars on short (2-5 day) periods. The planets have similar radii, ranging from 1.33(+0.29/-0.20) R_J for HATS-41b to 1.58(+0.16/-0.12) R_J for HATS-40b. Their masses and bulk densities, however, span more than an order of magnitude. HATS-39b has a mass of 0.63 +/- 0.13 M_J, and an inflated radius of 1.57 +/- 0.12 R_J, making it a good target for future transmission spectroscopic studies. HATS-41b is a very massive 9.7 +/- 1.6 M_J planet and one of only a few hot Jupiters found to date with a mass over 5 M_J. This planet orbits the highest metallicity star ([Fe/H] = 0.470 +/- 0.010) known to host a transiting planet and is also likely on an eccentric orbit. The high mass, coupled with a relatively young age (1.34 +0.31/-0.51 Gyr) for the host star, are factors that may explain why this planet's orbit has not yet circularised.

Journal information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

© 2018 Phys.org </s> Exoplanet WASP-104b is one of the least-reflective planets ever discovered. First identified in 2014 according to the Open Exoplanet Catalogue, WASP-104b belongs to a class of “exotic worlds” known as “hot Jupiters.”

These are gaseous exoplanets the size of Jupiter, only considerably much hotter because of their close proximity to their parent stars, which they orbit in less than 10 days, NASA explains.

Initially “considered oddballs,” hot Jupiters turned out to be quite common. Yet, although we’re used to them by know, they remain “shrouded in mystery,” NASA points out.

One thing we do know about hot Jupiters is that most of them are tidally locked — one side of the planet always faces its parent star, making it the permanent day side — and that they’re relatively dark, absorbing about 60 percent of the starlight that reaches them, notes Science Alert.

Last year, hot Jupiter WASP-12b made headlines when astronomers found out that it absorbs at least 94 percent of the light. At the time, this exoplanet was called “spooky” and “weird” and was described as “pitch black.”

But WASP-104b really takes the cake on this one. A new research by Keele University in the U.K. revealed that WASP-104b absorbs more than 97 to 99 percent of light.

Pause for gasp.

The research, a six-page paper published in the Cornell University Library, describes the exoplanet as being “darker than coal” (seriously, that’s what they put in the title) and deems it “one of the least-reflective planets found to date.”

Hot Jupiter WASP-104b is Darker Than Charcoal: WASP-104b, a so-called Hot Jupiter, has been identified in a new research as one of the least-reflective planets found to date. Astronomers classify a planet as a "Hot Jupiter" that are gas giant... https://t.co/k0ceVoVl1y — Rumor About (@rumorabout) April 23, 2018

“From all the dark planets I could find in the literature, this is top five-ish. I think top three,” lead researcher and astrophysicist Teo Mocnik said in a statement.

The authors analyzed data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope K2 mission, specifically the short-cadence data from Campaign 14, and found out that WASP-104b is surrounded by a thick, hazy atmosphere made up of atomic sodium and potassium. These elements absorb light in the visible spectrum, making the planet very dark on the day side (the only side that sees any starlight).

Since the planet is extremely close to its host star, WASP-104b is too hot for clouds to form in its atmosphere (on the day side, that it), which means there’s almost nothing there to reflect the light.

In fact, the exoplanet orbits its parent star — a yellow dwarf located about 466 light-years away from Earth, in the Leo constellation, Science Alert reports — from a distance of only 2.6 million miles. Remarkably, this peculiar planet completes a full orbit in just 1.75 days.

The only hot Jupiter that’s darker than WASP-104b is an exoplanet dubbed TrES-2b, which only reflects 0.1 percent of the light from its parent star, notes Science Alert.

A study has been revealed that WASP-104b, a Hot Jupiter exoplanet, has been discovered as one of the darkest exoplanets ever seen. https://t.co/APuAP36iRm — the Context (@thecontextnet) April 21, 2018

The media outlet clarifies, however, that these planets are not actually dark in color. In fact, judging by their extreme heat, they more likely glow in “a deep, bruise-like purple or a dull molten red” hue, Science Alert points out.

But WASP-104b is not the only hot Jupiter with an impressive tale to tell. In December, the world was acquainted with “death planet” WASP-18b, the first hot Jupiter with no water and an upper atmosphere almost completely made up of carbon monoxide.

Equally baffling is the hot Jupiter known as Kepler-13ab, a planet where the atmosphere “snows” titanium dioxide, the active ingredient used in most brands of sunscreen. </s> So far almost 4,000 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, and that tally is constantly growing. Now another 18 exoplanets have been added to the haul, but the difference this time is that all of them are roughly Earth-sized – much smaller than the Neptune-sized average found so far. The discovery was made in old data, using a new and more sensitive algorithm.

Since Earth is the only planet known (so far) to harbor life, worlds like our own are of particular interest to exoplanet-hunters. That makes this new haul pretty exciting, especially given that these planets are on the small side of the scale and are usually harder to find than Jupiter-sized gas giants.

The smallest of the bunch is only about two-thirds the size of Earth, making it the second-smallest exoplanet detected to date. Two others are also smaller than Earth, while the rest of the crop range up to about twice the size of our home world. The most exciting new planet though is one that appears to be cool enough to potentially host liquid water on its surface, meaning it could be habitable.

The 18 new exoplanets, to scale, as compared to Earth and Neptune. The green one, named EPIC 201238110.02, also appears to be cool enough to host liquid water on its surface NASA/JPL (Neptune), NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring (Earth), MPS/René Heller

These 18 new planets were discovered in old data by a team of German astronomers. Exoplanets are usually found using the transit method, which sounds simple enough in theory – essentially, telescopes like Kepler stare at stars and watch for sudden dips in their brightness. If that occurs on a regular schedule, it indicates that a planet is passing between the star and the telescope, blocking some of the light.

Obviously, larger planets make their presence known much more clearly, creating sharp drops in brightness. So it's no surprise that the majority of detected exoplanets are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, and ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.

"Standard search algorithms attempt to identify sudden drops in brightness," says René Heller, first author of two new studies. "In reality, however, a stellar disk appears slightly darker at the edge than in the center. When a planet moves in front of a star, it therefore initially blocks less starlight than at the mid-time of the transit. The maximum dimming of the star occurs in the center of the transit just before the star becomes gradually brighter again."

This graph compares the older algorithm for detecting exoplanets as they transit their host stars, against the new, more sensitive algorithm that can detect smaller worlds ASA/SDO (Sun), MPS/René Heller

So the team developed a new, more sensitive method. It works on the same basic principle but rather than just looking for the abrupt changes, it takes into account the more gradual dimming and brightening that occurs when smaller planets pass in front of a star. They may not be as immediately obvious, but if they repeat regularly they're still a solid indication of a planet's existence.

To test out the new method, the researchers applied it to an old batch of data gathered during Kepler's second run, between 2014 and 2018. During that time the telescope identified 517 stars with at least one planet around them, and the team re-analyzed this group to see if they could find any smaller worlds that were missed the first time around. Lo and behold, 18 such planets emerged from the data.

Of course, this is just the beginning. There's plenty more data from Kepler and its planet-hunting successor TESS to trawl through in search of hidden Earth-like worlds.

Two separate studies were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics [1], [2].

Source: Max Planck Institute </s> A piping hot planet discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has pointed the way to additional worlds orbiting the same star, one of which is located in the star’s habitable zone. If made of rock, this planet may be around twice Earth’s size.

The new worlds orbit a star named GJ 357, an M-type dwarf about one-third the Sun’s mass and size and about 40% cooler that our star. The system is located 31 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. In February, TESS cameras caught the star dimming slightly every 3.9 days, revealing the presence of a transiting exoplanet — a world beyond our solar system — that passes across the face of its star during every orbit and briefly dims the star’s light.



 Tour the GJ 357 system, located 31 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Astronomers confirming a planet candidate identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite subsequently found two additional worlds orbiting the star. The outermost planet, GJ 357 d, is especially intriguing to scientists because it receives as much energy from its star as Mars does from the Sun. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“In a way, these planets were hiding in measurements made at numerous observatories over many years,” said Rafael Luque, a doctoral student at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) on Tenerife who led the discovery team. “It took TESS to point us to an interesting star where we could uncover them.”

The transits TESS observed belong to GJ 357 b, a planet about 22% larger than Earth. It orbits 11 times closer to its star than Mercury does our Sun. This gives it an equilibrium temperature — calculated without accounting for the additional warming effects of a possible atmosphere — of around 490 degrees Fahrenheit (254 degrees Celsius).

“We describe GJ 357 b as a ‘hot Earth,’” explains co-author Enric Pallé, an astrophysicist at the IAC and Luque’s doctoral supervisor. “Although it cannot host life, it is noteworthy as the third-nearest transiting exoplanet known to date and one of the best rocky planets we have for measuring the composition of any atmosphere it may possess.”

But while researchers were looking at ground-based data to confirm the existence of the hot Earth, they uncovered two additional worlds. The farthest-known planet, named GJ 357 d, is especially intriguing.

“GJ 357 d is located within the outer edge of its star’s habitable zone, where it receives about the same amount of stellar energy from its star as Mars does from the Sun,” said co-author Diana Kossakowski at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. “If the planet has a dense atmosphere, which will take future studies to determine, it could trap enough heat to warm the planet and allow liquid water on its surface.”

Without an atmosphere, it has an equilibrium temperature of -64 F (-53 C), which would make the planet seem more glacial than habitable. The planet weighs at least 6.1 times Earth’s mass, and orbits the star every 55.7 days at a range about 20% of Earth’s distance from the Sun. The planet’s size and composition are unknown, but a rocky world with this mass would range from about one to two times Earth’s size.

Even through TESS monitored the star for about a month, Luque’s team predicts any transit would have occurred outside the TESS observing window.

GJ 357 c, the middle planet, has a mass at least 3.4 times Earth’s, orbits the star every 9.1 days at a distance a bit more than twice that of the transiting planet, and has an equilibrium temperature around 260 F (127 C). TESS did not observe transits from this planet, which suggests its orbit is slightly tilted — perhaps by less than 1 degree — relative to the hot Earth’s orbit, so it never passes across the star from our perspective.

To confirm the presence of GJ 357 b and discover its neighbors, Luque and his colleagues turned to existing ground-based measurements of the star’s radial velocity, or the speed of its motion along our line of sight. An orbiting planet produces a gravitational tug on its star, which results in a small reflex motion that astronomers can detect through tiny color changes in the starlight. Astronomers have searched for planets around bright stars using radial velocity data for decades, and they often make these lengthy, precise observations publicly available for use by other astronomers.

Luque’s team examined ground-based data stretching back to 1998 from the European Southern Observatory and the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, among many others.

A paper describing the findings was published on Wednesday, July 31, in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is available online.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission. </s> NASA's exoplanet-hunting telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), has made a number of monumental discoveries, spotting new worlds at an impressive rate. And with the first TESS science conference taking place at MIT this week, a handful of new discoveries are slowly coming to light, including its discovery of three planets hiding around a nearby star. Around an M-type dwarf known as GJ 357, researchers have spotted a new system of planets.

One in particular could be rather remarkable: A super-Earth, currently dubbed GJ 357 d, may have liquid water on its surface. At only 31 light-years away, in the constellation Hydra, it's a promising glimpse of another potentially habitable world.

But TESS didn't actually see this particular planet. Instead, TESS, which snaps images of the sky from space, located GJ 357 b, a "hot Earth" that practically hugs GJ 357. As a result, the surface temperature at GJ 357 b approaches 500 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not so great for life, as we know it, but it does provide researchers an opportunity to study its atmosphere because it's the third-closest exoplanet we've yet found.

Studying data for GJ 357 b, scientists were able to discover two stars: GJ 357 c and GJ 357 d. The latter is notable because the research team responsible for its discovery note that it is in its star's Goldilocks zone, where temperatures are just right to allow for liquid water. However, it's much closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun and orbits once every 55.7 days.

"GJ 357 d is located within the outer edge of its star's habitable zone, where it receives about the same amount of stellar energy from its star as Mars does from the Sun," said co-author Diana Kossakowski, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in a NASA press release. "If the planet has a dense atmosphere, which will take future studies to determine, it could trap enough heat to warm the planet and allow liquid water on its surface."

That's still a big if, of course, and astronomers will need to take additional measurements to understand the composition of the planet's atmosphere. If you were hoping for aliens, you're probably better off heading to Area 51 (please don't do that).

TESS had its robotic eyes peeled, looking for signs of GJ 357 d for a month, but researchers were not able to spot it using the telescope. Instead, they pored over decades-old data for signatures that confirmed its existence. The research, published in journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on July 9, details their findings and discusses GJ 357 c -- a planet in the middle of b and d, that travels around GJ 357 every nine days.

The exoplanet-hunting TESS was launched in April 2018, and its mission was extended through to 2022 in July.

What will the moon look like in 50 years?: A scientific outpost, a graveyard, a stepping stone to Mars. It all starts with the moon. I lived like a moon astronaut for the day: Preparing for life on the moon or Mars here on Earth is serious business. </s> NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has made several discoveries in recent days, including a planet with three suns and a sun with three planets. But the latest discovery may be the most surprising of all — an alien planet that is potentially capable of supporting life.

A group of astronomers using TESS made the discovery of the GJ 357 star in the Hydra constellation, approximately 31 light-years from Earth, NASA said in a statement. One light-year is the equivalent of 6 trillion miles.

The exoplanet in question, GJ 357 d, is on the outer limits of the star's "habitable zone," which means it likely gets the same amount of energy that Mars gets from the Sun, said the study's co-author, Diana Kossakowski. “If the planet has a dense atmosphere, which will take future studies to determine, it could trap enough heat to warm the planet and allow liquid water on its surface.”

“This is exciting, as this is humanity’s first nearby super-Earth that could harbor life — uncovered with help from TESS, our small, mighty mission with a huge reach,” said one of the study's co-authors, Lisa Kaltenegger, in a separate statement.

The government space agency has also posted a video to its YouTube page in conjunction with the discovery.

Assuming no atmosphere, GJ 357 d has an equilibrium temperature of -64 degrees Fahrenheit and is believed to have a mass of 6.1 times that of Earth. It also orbits GJ 357 every 55.7 days. It's unclear what GJ 357 d is comprised of and what its size is. However, if it were rocky, it would likely be between one and two times the size of Earth.

In addition to GJ 357 d, two other exoplanets were discovered, GJ 357 b and GJ 357 c. The exoplanet GJ 357 b is described as a "hot Earth," according to the study's co-author Enric Pallé.

Although GJ 357 b can't host life as we know it, due to its 490 degrees surface temperature, Pallé added astronomers are nonetheless intrigued. GJ 357 b is "the third-nearest transiting exoplanet known to date and one of the best rocky planets we have for measuring the composition of any atmosphere it may possess.”

The other exoplanet, GJ 357 c, orbits GJ 357 every 9.1 days and likely has a surface temperature approaching 260 degrees, NASA added.

Results of the findings were published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

PLANET NINE MAY EXIST, BUT IT MIGHT BE HIDING BEHIND NEPTUNE

The revelation comes just days after researchers used NASA’s TESS to discover the exoplanet LTT 1445Ab, which has three red suns and a star system, known as "TESS Object of Interest 270," 73 light-years away from Earth.

TESS, which launched in April 2018, replaced the Kepler telescope, which started to malfunction towards the latter part of last year and was eventually retired in October 2018 after discovering more than 2,600 exoplanets, including 18 Earth-sized exoplanets.

In September, the $200 million TESS found its first exoplanet, and in April, it found its first Earth-sized planet.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP </s> Scientists have discovered 15 new planets – including one ‘super-Earth’ that could harbour liquid water – orbiting small, cool stars near our solar system. The stars, known as red dwarfs, are of interest for studies of planetary formation and evolution, said the team led by Teruyuki Hirano from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

“Red dwarf systems, especially coolest red dwarfs, are just beginning to be investigated, so they are very exciting targets for future exoplanet research,” Hirano said. One of the brightest red dwarfs – K2-155 that is around 200 light years away from Earth – has three transiting ‘super-Earths’, which are slightly bigger than our own planet.

Of those three ‘super-Earths’, the outermost planet, K2-155d, with a radius 1.6 times that of Earth, could be within the host star’s habitable zone, the researchers noted in the study appeared in The Astronomical Journal. The team found that K2-155d could potentially have liquid water on its surface based on three-dimensional global climate simulations. To reach this conclusion, the team sifted through data from NASA Kepler spacecraft’s second mission, K2, and follow-up observations using ground-based telescopes, including the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) in Spain.

A more precise estimate of the radius and temperature of the K2-155 star would be needed to conclude definitively whether K2-155d is habitable. Achieving such precision would require further studies, for example, using interferometric techniques, the researchers said. The researchers also investigated the relationship between planet radius and metallicity of the host star.

“Large planets are only discovered around metal-rich stars and what we found was consistent with our predictions. The few planets with a radius about three times that of Earth were found orbiting the most metal-rich red dwarfs,” Hirano noted. With the planned launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in April this year, Hirano is hopeful that even more planets will be discovered. “TESS is expected to find many candidate planets around bright stars closer to Earth,” he said.

For all the latest Technology News, download Indian Express App </s> To detect the atmosphere of the giant exoplanet WASP-69b, the scientists used the CARMENES instrument, which is installed on the 3.5-meter telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory (located in Almería, Spain). This spectrograph simultaneously covers the visible wavelength range and the near-infrared at high spectral resolution. This has made it possible to reveal the composition of the atmosphere of this exoplanet and to draw conclusions about the speed of the helium particles that leave the gravitational field of the planet and the length of the tail they produce.

The planet was observed during a transit, when it passed in front of its host star. During this event, the planet and its atmosphere eclipse part of the starlight. "We observed a stronger and longer-lasting dimming of the starlight in a region of the spectrum where helium gas absorbs light," says Lisa Nortmann, a researcher at the IAC and lead author of the article published today in the journal Science. "The longer duration of this absorption allows us to infer the presence of a tail," she adds.

But this is not the only result described in the article. The authors have also analyzed four other planets in a similar way. These are the hot exoplanets HD 189733b and HD 209458b, which have a mass similar to that of Jupiter, the extremely hot giant planet KELT-9b and the warm Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 436b. The analysis does not show extensive helium exospheres around the last three planets, which defies previous theoretical predictions. The hot Jupiter HD 189733b, on the other hand, does reveal a clear signal of absorbing helium, although here, the helium envelope is more compact and does not form a tail.

The team also investigated the host stars of the five exoplanets using data from the European Space Agency's Multi-Mirror X-Ray Mission (ESA XMM-Newton). They detected helium in the atmospheres of those planets that receive the largest amount of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet radiation from their host stars. "This is a first big step toward finding out how exoplanet atmospheres evolve over time, and what the distribution of masses and radii of the observed population of super-Earth and mini-Neptune planets could result from," says Enric Pallé, IAC researcher and co-author of the publication.

The results of such studies could confirm that extreme radiation from the host star can strip the gaseous envelope of giant planets (similar to Jupiter or Neptune) and turn them into rocky planets with densities similar to Venus or Earth. "In the past, studies of atmospheric escape, like the one we have seen in WASP-69b, were based on space-borne observations of hydrogen in the far ultraviolet, a spectral region of very limited access and strongly affected by interstellar absorption," says Michael Salz, a researcher at the University of Hamburg and first author of a companion publication by the same team, which focuses on the details of the detection in HD 189733b to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "Our results show that helium is a very promising new tracer to study atmospheric escape in exoplanets."

This new line of research will enable the community of researchers specializing in characterization of exoplanet atmospheres to compare the evaporation processes in a large sample of planets and answer questions such as whether planets with ultra-short orbital periods are actually the evaporated nuclei of ancient hot Jupiters.

The CARMENES instrument was developed by a consortium of eleven Spanish and German institutions, including the IAC. It was designed to search for terrestrial type planets in the habitable zone of M-stars, the region around a star where conditions allow the existence of liquid water. The results published today demonstrate the ability of the instrument to contribute significantly to the exoplanet atmosphere research field.

Explore further: Helium detected in exoplanet atmosphere for the first time

More information: L. Nortmann el al., "Ground-based detection of an extended helium atmosphere in the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-69b," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ … 1126/science.aat5348 </s> The universe just got a little more crowded.

Nearly 100 new exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – have been discovered, scientists announced in a new study published on Thursday.

Using powerful telescopes, exoplanets can be detected as they orbit around their star, which causes a subtle dimming of starlight.

These most recent exoplanets were spotted using Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, now in orbit around the Earth. Though the spacecraft had a major mechanical failure in 2013, scientists were able to reconfigure it to enable it to keep watching for exoplanets.

“We started out analysing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets,” said study lead author Andrew Mayo, a PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark. “In turn, 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries.”

Scientists discover the first planets outside the Milky Way – and there may be trillions

Since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995, about 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

But this is only the tip of a very big iceberg. Astronomers say there are likely hundreds of billions of exoplanets in our galaxy alone.

“Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science,” Mayo said. “As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context.”

Google’s computers help Nasa find two new planets around distant stars

The research was published on Thursday in the Astronomical Journal.
Four new Hot Jupiter exoplanets are discovered: HATS-39b, HATS-40b, HATS-41b and HATS-42b.