Scientists discover new Saturn-sized planet

Scientists discover new Saturn-sized planet
Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

In a new study, researchers from NASA’s new TESS Mission have discovered a Saturn-sized planet.

The planet – TOI 197.01 (TOI is short for “TESS Object of Interest”) – is described as a “hot Saturn” in a recent study.

It is about the same size as Saturn and is also very close to its star.

The study was conducted by an international team of 141 astronomers.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is a NASA-sponsored Astrophysics Explorer-class mission.

It is performing an all-sky survey to search for planets transiting nearby stars.

The main goal of TESS is to discover planets smaller than Neptune that transit stars bright enough.

Then follow-up spectroscopic observations can provide planet masses and atmospheric compositions.

According to the researchers, TESS will have scanned 85% of the sky in two years.

The team also made a target list of 25,000 sun-like oscillating stars to be studied using TESS data.

Many stars are similar to our future sun.

In the case of host star TOI-197, the team used its oscillations and found that it’s about 5 billion years old and is a little heavier and larger than the sun.

They also determined that planet TOI-197.01 is a gas planet with a radius about nine times the Earth’s and about the size of Saturn.

The scientists suggest that TOI-197 provides a first glimpse at the strong potential of TESS to characterize exoplanets using asteroseismology.

They expect to study the very faint stars, the white dwarfs, which may represent the future of our sun and solar system.

The lead author is Daniel Huber, an assistant astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Institute for Astronomy.

The study is published in The Astronomical Journal and online by The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

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