An international team of astronomers has discovered two “super-Earth” exoplanets orbiting a nearby M-dwarf star known as TOI-2095, using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) satellite. Newly discovered alien worlds have short orbital periods and are slightly larger than Earth. Results were available on the preprint server on April 18. arXiv.

TESS surveys about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the Sun in search of transiting exoplanets, ranging from small rocky worlds to gas giants. It has identified 6,400 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOIs), of which 330 have been confirmed so far.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Felipe Murgas of the University of La Laguna, Spain, reports that two more exoplanet candidates have been confirmed by TESS. By performing photometric observations and radial velocity measurements, they found that the transit signals in TOI-2095’s light curve are planetary in nature.

“We report the confirmation of two planets transiting around the M-dwarf TOI-2095 detected by TESS. The researchers used high-resolution ground-based images, TESS photometric data, and CARMENES to reject false-positive scenarios, measure planetary radii, and set tight upper limits for the masses of transit candidates. We use radial velocities.

The closest exoplanet to the star is about 0.1 AU. from it, renamed TOI-2095 b. According to the research, the planet is about 25% larger than Earth and has an orbital period of 17.66 days. The equilibrium temperature of TOI-2095 b is estimated to be 347 K, and its mass is estimated to be no more than 4.1 Earth masses.

The second planet in the system, TOI-2095 c, has a radius of about 1.33 Earth radii and orbits its host at a distance of about 0.137 AU every 28.17 days. The equilibrium temperature of TOI-2095 c is about 297 K, and its maximum mass, according to calculations, is 7.4 Earth masses.

TOI-2095’s parent star is about 56% smaller and less massive than the Sun. It has a spectral M2.5 V type, an effective temperature of 3759 K, and a metallicity of -0.24. The age of the star is estimated to be at least one billion years. In conclusion, the paper’s authors noted that two recently discovered exoplanets are close to the inner boundary of TOI-2095’s habitable zone, and their parameters make them attractive targets for further observations.

“In particular, highly accurate radial velocity tracking can help improve measurements of planetary mass (and thus mass density) and provide some constraints on future perspectives on atmospheric properties,” the researchers write.