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ENGLAND – A group of astronomers have discovered 85 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, that may harbor extraterrestrial life.
Temperatures on these distant worlds – which have yet to be confirmed – are believed to be cold enough to support life, astronomers say.
According to independent reports, these exoplanets are similar in size to Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. They were discovered using NASA’s Transitioning Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
TESS allows scientists to observe a decrease in a star’s brightness, called a transit, caused by a passing object.
It usually takes at least three transits to find an exoplanet this way and determine how long it will take to orbit its star.
However, in the new study, researchers observed systems that transited only twice, leading to the conclusion that these planets have longer orbital periods and cooler temperatures.
The 85 exoplanet candidates require between 20 and 700 days to orbit their parent star, while most of the exoplanets previously observed by TESS have orbital periods of 3-10 days.
Researchers say some planets are so far from their parent stars that their temperatures may be just right to support life. This condition is called the “habitable zone”.
At this point, it remains to be confirmed that these objects are exoplanets, but researchers hope that this can be achieved through future observations.
Up to 60 of the 85 exoplanet candidates are new discoveries, while 25 more were discovered in TESS data by independent research teams using different techniques.
Faith Hawthorn, a doctoral student at the University of Warwick, said she ran an initial algorithm to look for transits using a sample of 1.4 million stars.
“After a careful review process, we reduced the number to just 85 systems that appear to host exoplanets that only transited twice in the data set,” he explained.
Professor Daniel Bayliss, who was also involved in the research, added that it was “very exciting” to discover the planets and learn that many of them may be in the right temperature zone to support life.
“As part of the TESS mission collaboration, we are also publishing our discoveries so that astronomers around the world can study this unique exoplanet in more detail,” he said.
“We hope this will stimulate further exploration of this amazing exoplanet,” he added.
Dr. Sam Gill, author of both studies, noted that discovering exoplanets from just two transits is a “smart way” to find exoplanets with longer transit surveys.
“This allows us to find planets that are much cooler than traditional transit searches,” he said.
This international collaboration, led by Hawthorn at the University of Warwick, was published on Wednesday (24/1) in the Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
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