The newly discovered planet is named Pi Mensae c, with a diameter 2.14 times that of Earth and a mass 4.82 times that of Earth. It orbits around its parent star Pi Mensae, a yellow dwarf star similar to our sun.
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TESS and the evaporating super-Earth it has just discovered – NASA’s graphic illustration.
This super-Earth is located extremely close to its parent star, nearly 50 times closer than the distance between Mercury and the Sun. Calculations of the planet’s density suggest it’s mostly a water world but could have a rocky core and an atmosphere primarily composed of hydrogen and helium.
“We believe this planet could be evaporating due to the intense radiation it receives from its parent star,” said Chelse Huang, a scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the lead author of the study.
Prior to TESS’s operation, another planet in this planetary system had already been discovered, named Pi Mensae b, a “super-Neptune”. It’s a gas giant about 10 times the size of Neptune.
The parent star Pi Mensae is a bright star in the Tucana constellation, located approximately 59.5 light-years away from us. It’s named Tucana because this constellation resembles the Table Mountain in South Africa.
This study was recently published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.