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NASA's TESS Spacecraft Discovers Two Low-Density Exoplanets in Same System
NASA's TESS spacecraft identified two exoplanets with densities comparable to cotton candy. TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c orbit the same star with unusually long periods and interact gravitationally. A team led by George Dansfield at Oxford University made the find using seven years of data.
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NASA's TESS spacecraft has discovered two exoplanets with extremely low densities in the same system, Engadget reported. The planets, designated TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, were identified by a team led by George Dansfield of Oxford University's Department of Physics. TOI-791 b is nearly the same size as Jupiter but has only 3 percent of its mass.
TOI-791 c is larger than Jupiter and has 5.9 percent of Jupiter's mass. Their densities are comparable to cotton candy. TESS collected 1,122 days of data on the system over seven years. The planets have unusually long orbits around their host star and gravitationally interact, which produces variations in the timing of their transits.
Researchers used those timing variations to calculate the planets' masses. TESS was launched in 2018. It has identified 7,931 exoplanet candidates, of which 897 have been confirmed. Dansfield said only a handful of such super-puffy planets are known and that finding two in one system is rarer still.
Researchers plan to study the chemical makeup of the planets' atmospheres, how their spin affects their shape, and how cotton-candy-type planets form.
