Astronomers have discovered an ultra-short-period planet which is super light. They have named this planet GJ 367 b and it orbits its host star in eight hours. The planet is similar to the size of Mars.
The GJ 367 b is close enough to our Earth as researchers observed all the properties of the star that they could not discover with the previous USPs. Researchers think that GJ 376 b is a rocky planet which contains a solid core of iron and nickel like Mercury.
As GJ 367 b stays too close to its host star, it is blasted with 500 times more radiation than what we receive from Sun. So, the temperature of the planet is 1,500 degrees Celsius.
Though no habitation can take place in the planet in this temperature but researchers think there is a chance that the planet has habitable partners. Its host star is a M dwarf means it hosts multiple planets. So, there are other planets than GJ 367 b which will help scientists to understand the origins of GJ 376 b and other ultra-short-period planets.
This research has been published in Science journal and the new planet was found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or TESS. TESS looks for changes in brightness in our nearest stars. A team of researchers have studied TESS’s data for transits to find out which planet is briefly blocking its star light.
In 2019, TESS discovered a patch in the southern sky. Scientists have studied this data well to find out this is not coming from a “false positive” source and they find out an ultra-short, eight-hour orbit star GJ 376 b.
