Two low-mass stars and one brown dwarf discovered around aged stars

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

Three companions to aged stars, two low-mass stars and one brown dwarf, have been detected using the transiting exoplanet survey satellite. The new objects are at least 70 times larger than the largest planet in the solar system. There is a paper on the arXiv pre-print server.

The aim of the survey is to find transiting exoplanets, which are planets outside the solar system. There are nearly 6,000 candidate exoplanets that have been identified so far. Astronomers used TESS to find many brown dwarfs and companion stars.

Three aged F-type and G-type subgiant stars designated TOI-2336, TOI-1608 and TOI 2521 were found to have transit signals. The signals are not caused by exoplanets but by larger objects.

There is one brown dwarf, TOI-2336 b, and two objects near the hydrogen burning mass limit, TOI-1608 b and TOI 2521 b.

The density of TOI-2336 b is 75 g/ cm 3 because of its 70 Jupiter mass. The object was categorized as a brown dwarf due to its mass. The TOI-2336 b travels at a distance of 0.08AU from its host.

The density of TOI-1608 b was calculated to be 63.7 g/ cm 3 because it is 90 times bigger than Jupiter. The study states that the object is separated from TOI-1608 by 0.04AU and that it will take 59 hours to reach its final destination. It is most likely a low-mass M dwarf star, according to the property of TOI-1608 b.

It was found that the object is larger than the largest planet in the solar system. A density of 93 g/ cm 3 is achieved. TOI 2521 b is thought to be a low-mass M dwarf, with an estimated distance to the primary star of 0.06AU.

The researchers said that all of the new objects are inflated.

The authors of the paper concluded that all three companions have inflated their radii.

There are three companions around aged stars discovered by TESS. There is a book titled "arxiv.2210.13939."

Journal information: arXiv

There is a science network.