An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of a new “super-Earth” orbiting a distant red dwarf star. Named TOI-1680 b, this planet was detected using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), part of the agency’s Explorer program.
TESS, launched in April 2018, plays a crucial role in locating exoplanets outside our solar system by covering an area 400 times larger than its predecessor, the Kepler mission.
This “super-Earth,” approximately 50% larger than our own planet, lies about 120 light years away. Mourad Ghachoui from the University of Liège, Belgium, led the research, confirming the transit signal of TOI-1680 b around an inactive red dwarf star through ground-based systems using photometry, imaging, and spectroscopy.
TOI-1680 b boasts a mass of roughly 3.18 Earth masses and a radius of 1.46 Earth radii, completing an orbit around its star in less than five days.
Considering transmission spectroscopic metrics, this exoplanet could be a promising candidate for future atmospheric characterization studies using the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec/PRISM instrument.
It has the potential to reveal evidence of water vapors, aerosols, and other vital observations in the study of distant exoplanets. Among 63 current targets, TOI-1680 b ranks thirteenth for such studies.
TESS, since its first light image in August 2018, has been diligently surveying almost 200,000 bright stellar bodies near our Sun. So far, it has identified nearly 6,700 potential exoplanets, of which 363 have been confirmed.
