An international probe has discovered a moderate, Earth-sized, transiting planet in its star's habitable zone. According to the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands (IAC), it is located in the constellation Pisces and is about 40 light-years away.
By: Clarion
According to the results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the planet was named Gliese 12 and its discovery was thanks to the observations of NASA's DES satellite and facilities such as the Carmens Spectrograph at Calar Alto (Almería) and the MuSCAT2 observatory. Carlos Sánchez Telescope, at the Tete Observatory (Tenerife).
Gliese 12 b lies within the habitable zone of its star, a cool red dwarf, making it “a promising candidate” for studying its atmosphere with the James Webb Space Telescope, the IAC pointed out in a statement.
It is the closest Earth-sized exoplanet detected by the transit system to date. This is done by observing the periodicity of its star caused by the transit of the planet.
Likewise, it has a diameter comparable to Venus, is slightly smaller than Earth, and has an estimated surface temperature of about 42 degrees Celsius. The final temperature depends on whether the planet has been able to retain its atmosphere and its composition from the time of its formation to the present.
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