An international team of scientists, including researchers from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), has confirmed the existence of three bodies orbiting the dynamic exoplanetary system TOI-201. They include a super-earth (TOI-201 d), a warm Jupiter (TOI-201 b) and a brown dwarf (TOI-201 c). The paper is published in Science Advances. “The goal was to characterize the TOI-201 planetary system to understand not just what planets are there, but how they interact with each other dynamically,” said Ismael Mireles, a PhD candidate in the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy and
One of the biggest recent surprises in astronomy is the discovery that most stars like the Sun harbor a planet between the size of Earth and Neptune within the orbit of Mercury — sizes and orbits absent from our solar system. These ‘ super-Earths' and ` sub-Neptunes’ are the galaxy's most common planets, but their formation has been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team of astronomers has found a crucial missing link. By weighing four newborn planets in the V1298 Tau system, they've captured a rare snapshot of worlds in the process of transforming into the galaxy's most common
Arianna Di Cintio, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and a lecturer at the University of La Laguna, chaired the organisation of this event, which took place as part of the 17th Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA). The symposium attracted more than 75 participants at each of its four sessions, featured over 30 scientific presentations and welcomed six guest experts. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has organised the first symposium of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) dedicated to the computational modelling of galaxies and