An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of two exoplanets orbiting the nearby star HD 101581. The new alien worlds are slightly smaller than Earth.
As Day.Az reports with reference to Gazeta.ru, the study was published on the portal of non-peer-reviewed scientific materials arXiv.
The team made the discovery using NASA’s Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a satellite designed to detect planets outside the solar system.
According to scientists, the discovered planets are located 41.7 light years from our planet. Planet HD 101581 b has a radius of about 0.95 Earth radii, and is approximately 3.6 times more massive than our planet.
The second planet, HD 101581 c, is almost identical in size to Earth (0.99 Earth radii), but is 4.2 times more massive.
Astronomers noted that HD 101581 b and HD 101581 c are almost certainly uninhabitable due to their close proximity to their star. Temperatures on the surface of worlds range from 560°C to 473°C.
The team noted that it also detected a signal emanating from another planet in the HD 101581 system. If the information is confirmed, then this as yet unknown world will have a radius of about 0.98 from Earth and a mass of 3.6 Earth masses.