A total of 59 exoplanets were detected in the vicinity of our Earth and Solar System. The worlds, located in our same region of the Milky Way, are orbiting red dwarf stars and some of them gather elements to develop life as we know it, or at least be habitable.
These new exoplanets that enter the experts’ radar were captured by the CARMENES project. This is an initiative that brings together more than 200 scientists from eleven astronomy organizations in Germany and Spain.
It is a work in which they developed a device capable of measuring the visible and infrared light of the objects it points to. They installed them in the 3.5-meter telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory, in Almería, and made observations for some 750 nights, reported Univision.
Some 362 massive stars are counted within the observations. They were mostly nearby red dwarfs.
“If our galaxy were a city, we have searched only in our block of flats, we have not even gone out to explore the neighborhood,” said Ignasi Ribas, director of the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia and the lead author of the study, in statements offered to The country.
Are there habitable worlds?
In order to determine this characteristic, scientists need to measure the temperature and radiation emitted by massive stars, and the distance at which possible candidates orbit. They also need to know if they are rocky worlds, since the gaseous ones do not have firm ground.
In this sense they find that there are four rocks, as well as Mars, Mercury, Venus and Earth, and only two are at a perfect distance from their sun.
Two are orbiting the star Teegarden, about 12.5 light-years away, and the other two are circling GJ 1002, which is about 16 light-years away from Earth.