Planets

Artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-121b (Image Engine House VFX)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports the results of a new study on the exoplanet WASP-121b, an ultrahot Jupiter considered one of the planets with the most extreme conditions known. A team of researchers led by Tom Evans, today at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, used data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate compounds present in WASP-121b’s atmosphere. The conclusion is that there may be clouds of iron, titanium, and corundum, the crystallized form of aluminum oxide that makes up rubies and sapphires.

Artist's concept of WD1054-226's system (Image courtesy Mark A. Garlick / markgarlick.com)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the observation of debris orbiting the white dwarf cataloged as WD1054-226 in a formation that suggests a gravitational bond such as the one which can be generated by a planet. A team of researchers used the ULTRACAM camera mounted on ESO’s NTT telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile to examine objects that regularly pass in front of those star remnants. Data obtained from NASA’s TESS space telescope helped identify what appears to be a disk of debris that hasn’t dispersed, perhaps thanks to a planet acting as a sort of shepherd that keeps them bound. The planet would be in ​​that system’s habitable area, a special case since it has a white dwarf at its center.

Artist’s impression of Proxima d and Proxima Centauri (Image ESO/L. Calçada)

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the discovery of another rocky planet in the Proxima Centauri system. A team of researchers led by João Faria of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Portugal, used detections conducted with the ESPRESSO spectrograph mounted on ESO’s VLT in Chile to find the traces of the planet that was cataloged as Proxima d. This is the exoplanet with the smallest mass identified with the radial velocity method since the estimated minimum mass is about a quarter of the Earth’s, twice Mars’s. Its distance from Proxima Centauri is around 4 million kilometers, so it’s more similar to Venus or Mercury.

Artist's concept of the exoplanet TOI 560.01 with its star (Image Adam Makarenko (Keck Observatory))

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Two articles published in “The Astronomical Journal” report studies on as many exoplanets of the mini-Neptune type that are losing their atmosphere. Two teams led by Michael Zhang with other members in common used the Hubble Space Telescope to study the exoplanet HD 63433c and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to study the exoplanet TOI 560.01, also known as HD 73583b. In both cases, the XMM-Newton space telescope was used to study the high-energy emissions from their stars and from the outflow of gas from their atmospheres. Observations of gas leaking into space is a confirmation of the theory that mini-Neptunes can transform into super-Earths at the end of that loss.

Pluto and Sputnik Planitia

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An article published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets” reports a study that once again addresses the question of the possibility that the dwarf planet Pluto has or at least had in the past an underground ocean. P. J. McGovern, O. L. White, and P. M. Schenk used data collected by NASA’s New Horizons space probe to analyze in particular the geological features of Sputnik Planitia, a vast basin that makes up the western part of Pluto’s heart-shaped region. The results are important to assess for example the thickness of its lithosphere and how this dwarf planet was formed.