Image: M. Weiss/CfA

The discovery became a sensation in space exploration.

More than 4000 are known today, most exoplanets — gas giants, similar to Jupiter or Neptune. “Supertall” — earth-type planets, with a mass not exceeding our more than 10-fold — open only a few dozen. Even fewer of them are at a distance from its star, which on the surface remains moderate temperatures, allowing it to hold liquid water and providing the conditions for the development of life. And all known potentially habitable planets are orbiting near red dwarf stars, writes naked-science.ru.

Such stars are the most common in the Galaxy, but if they fit for life, remains unclear. On the one hand, red dwarfs remain stable for longer times such as ours, giving evolution a huge amount of time. On the other — their radiation is weaker and mostly falls on low-energy infrared range.

In order to get enough heat, the planet will have to move in very close orbit, where it will experience the powerful effects of tidal forces due to the gravity of the dwarf. The resulting deformation of the planet can run a persistent and hyperactive volcanism. In addition, from time to time red dwarfs emit extremely powerful flash: calculations show that they are capable of completely sterilizing the surface of nearby planets.

However, recently astronomers from the German Institute for Solar system research max Planck was able to detect the first potentially habitable planet located in the solar-type stars. Located at a distance of a little more than 3100 light years yellow dwarf Kepler-160 has a mass of 0.9 solar masses, a radius of 1.1 of its radius, and the luminosity is almost the same as that of the Sun.

Until now she had two known exoplanets, both significantly larger than Earth and too close to the star orbits: apparently, it is incinerated, burning worlds. However, in a new article published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Rene Heller (René Heller) and colleagues report about the two candidates, the presence of which are indicative of deviations in the movement of the known planets.

One of them, a giant Kepler-160d, not against the backdrop of the disk of its star, therefore, was not seen in previous observations. But more interesting was another — KOI-456.04, the radius of which is estimated at only 1.9 radius of the Earth, and a complete revolution in its orbit it makes for 378 days. Thus, KOI-456.04 surprisingly close to our familiar world, and in itself, and the characteristics of its star. According to astronomers, until now, not been known any such a distant system.

I should add that the calculations and discovered KOI-456.04 in the historical data is not sufficiently reliable — and it remains in candidate status until new observations. The authors hope that it will help the European mission PLATO — a new space telescope to search for exoplanets, which is set to launch in 2026 and aims to detect is “supertall”.