Astronomers and Astrobiologists try to follow the water in the search for extrasolar planets. It comes down to looking for planets that are in the HZ, where liquid water can flow on its surface. Water is the only solvent that can support life and is required by all life on the planet. Scientists theorize that there may be a group of rocky planets in the universe that are completely covered in water.
Scientists are interested in finding examples of this type of planet because of the explosion in confirmed exoplanets. Thanks to an international team of researchers led by the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at the Université de Montréal, an exoplanet in its system can be completely covered in deep oceans. The "ocean world" is also known as this. The nature of habitability could be revealed when follow-up observations are made using theJWST.
Charles Cadieux was the leader of the international team. Fifty-five scientists from Canada, France, the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, and Russia were with him. The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, and many other institutions are represented by the team.
Their paper, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal on August 12th, explains that the exoplanet (TOI 1452 b) is in a system that is 100 light-years away from Earth. The system is made up of two M-type stars that are very close to each other at 97AUs. The data obtained by the TESS gave rise to the idea that one of these stars might be an exoplanet.
According to the TESS data, the exoplanet experienced a slight decrease in brightness every 11 days, from which they estimated it to be 70% larger than Earth. Cadieux and his colleagues used the Plantes Extrasolaires en Transition et en Occultation camera to conduct follow-up observations.
The two stars of TOI 1452 appeared to be a single point of light. The images it got confirmed that an exoplanet is in the vicinity of TOI 1452. Subsequent observations were made by a team from the NAOJ using a telescope in Hawaii. The director of iREx and a professor at the Université de Montréal are co-authors of a new book.
“I’m extremely proud of this discovery because it shows the high calibre of our researchers and instrumentation. It is thanks to the OMM, a special instrument designed in our labs called SPIRou and an innovative analytic method developed by our research team that we were able to detect this one-of-a-kind exoplanet.”
The OMM helped confirm the nature of the signal and estimate the planet's radius. This wasn't a regular check. The signal detected by TESS was caused by an exoplanet circling TOI 1452, the largest of the two stars in the system.
The team used the un SpectroPolarimtre Infra-Rouge (SPIRou) instrument to get estimates on the size of the exoplanet. It is ideal to study low-mass stars like TOI 1452 because they are bright in the wavelength of the sun. It took more than 50 hours to produce estimates of the planet's mass.
The LBL analytic method developed by tienne Artigau and Neil Cook was used to perform the data analysis. The team was able to identify the weak signal that came from the exoplanet. The students analyzed the data to learn more about the host star's composition which is useful for constraining the planet's internal structure. The astronomer theorizes that TOI 1452 b is a rocky planet.
They concluded that TOI 1452 b could be covered in a thick layer of water, similar to the largest moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and other icy bodies. Water may make up as much as 30% of TOI 1452 b's mass according to interior modeling conducted by University of Toronto's Mykhaylo Plotnykov and Diana Valencia.
Astronomers have found hundreds of similar exoplanets with different densities between Earth and Neptune. This suggests that a lot of the exoplanets' mass is made up of volatiles such as water. This discovery may be the first of its kind.
“TOI-1452 b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date. Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock, like Earth.”
It is unlikely to have an icy surface because TOI 1452 b is within its host star's HZ. One of the few known temperate planets that also exhibits the characteristics of an ocean is TOI 1452 b. It's proximity to Earth makes it a good candidate for atmospheric characterization, as demonstrated by the spectrum it obtained twice from WASP 59, which confirmed the presence of water and carbon dioxide.
TOI 1452 is located in a region of the sky that is ideal for follow-up observations, making it even better. The Canadian Space Agency's contribution to the JWST will help to better understand TOI 1452 b. We will be able to observe this strange and wonderful world soon.
There is further reading on IREX.
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