Representatives of the Canary Institute of Astrophysics and the University of Oviedo announced the opening of two new planetary systems, one of which has three terrestrial-sized planets. Data on the new worlds was obtained from NASA’s K2 mission, launched in 2013.
The first system refers to the star K2-239. This is a red dwarf of the type M3V, captured in the observations of the GTC (Palm) telescope. It is located at a distance of 160 light-years from the Sun and lives on the territory of the Sextant constellation. The compact system has three rocky worlds of terrestrial size (radii - 1.1, 1.0 and 1.1 terrestrial), which perform orbital rotation in 5.2, 7.8 and 10.1 days. Another red dwarf K2-240 sheltered two planets resembling super-earths (twice the size of Earth). The atmospheric temperature of red dwarfs reaches 3450 K and 3800 K, which is almost half of solar heating. The researchers believe that all the planets found will be endowed with temperatures ten degrees higher than that of the Earth, due to the powerful radiation (caused by the proximity of the orbit to the stars).
Future survey campaigns led by the space telescope James Webb will take on the characteristics of the atmospheric composition of the planets found. The masses, densities and physical characteristics can be acquired using the ESPRESSO instrument on the Very Large Telescope and the spectrographs at the GTC.
