Astronomers find rare Earth-mass rocky planet suitable for the search for signs of life - Phys.org

Analyses by a team led by astronomer Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy describe a planet that orbits its home star, the red dwarf Wolf 1069, in the habitable zone.

Of the more than 5,000 exoplanets they have discovered so far, only about a dozen have an Earth-like mass and populate the habitable zone, the range in a planetary system where water can maintain its liquid form on the planet's surface.

"When we analyzed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass," says Diana Kossakowski.

"It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-fifteenth of the separation between the Earth and the sun," The results of the study have now been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

If Wolf 1069 b is assumed to be a bare and rocky planet, the average temperature even on the side facing the star would be just minus 23 degrees Celsius.

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile, may be able to study the composition of the atmospheres of those planets and possibly even detect molecular evidence of life.