February 13, 2023 by Valérie de Lapparent, Institut d'astrophysique de Paris Since the discovery in 1995 of a planet in orbit around a star other than the sun, research in exoplanetology has revolutionized our knowledge of planetary systems. The SPIRou instrument, installed at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, contributes to these results, in particular by observing the possible planets identified by the TESS observatory satellite. googletag. cmd. push(function() { googletag. display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); }); By combining the data from both instruments, the planet TOI-1695b has been discovered, and is one of the new sub-Neptune and super-Earth type planets revealed by SPIRou around stars less massive and cooler than the sun, by an international team in which the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris plays a major role. These results promote a better understanding of these types of planet that do not exist in the solar system. For centuries, only the planets of the solar system were known and observed: four giant planets far from the sun, and four telluric planets (including Earth) closer to our star. In modern 19th and 20th century thought, it seemed very likely that many, if not all other stars also hosted planets; being inaccessible to our means of observation, these remained however in the domain of the imaginary or of science fiction. It was therefore not known whether these possible extrasolar planets really existed, were similar to those of the solar system, or had different properties. The situation changed in 1995 with the first detection of an extrasolar planet, carried out at the Haute-Provence Observatory by astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. New instruments have since been developed; they have enabled the detection and characterization of thousands of exoplanets, revolutionizing our knowledge of planetary systems, and in particular of their formation and evolution. Among these, France and the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris have made a major contribution to the development of the SPIRou instrument (Figure 1) at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (Figure 2), installed on the Big Island of Hawaii. It is a spectropolarimeter operating in the infrared range. It makes it possible to search for planets around stars less massive, smaller and cooler than the sun, the red dwarfs (their temperature is between 2500 and 4000°C, while the sun is at 5500°C). It also makes it possible to study the magnetic activity of these small stars, which are the most numerous stars in our galaxy. The scientific teams use SPIRou in particular to characterize the candidate planets (objects likely to be planets) which have been identified around red dwarf stars by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a NASA observatory satellite, and which should be observed with SPIRou to establish their nature. It is in this context that researchers from the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, including Flavien Kiefer (collaborator and former postdoctoral fellow at the IAP), Eder Martioli (IAP associate researcher and former postdoctoral fellow at the IAP), Guillaume Hébrard (senior CNRS researcher), Alain Lecavelier des Étangs (senior CNRS researcher) and Pierre-Cécil König (former Ph. D. student at the IAP) present the discovery and characterization of the new planet TOI-1695b, carried out within an international team. The work is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics . Barely twice as big but six times more massive than Earth, this new planet has a density slightly lower than that of Earth. It is of the sub-Neptune type (a planet a little smaller than Neptune). Its temperature, however, is a few hundred degrees higher than that of Neptune, and its atmosphere most likely contains large amounts of hydrogen, helium, and water vapor. Finally, this planet goes around its red dwarf star in three days (Figure 3). Previously, the same team had already announced the discoveries of the super-Earth TOI-1452b (published in The Astronomical Journal ) and the the sub-Neptune TOI-1759b (published in Astronomy & Astrophysics ). Like TOI-1695b, these two planets orbit a red dwarf star. The size of these three planets is between 1. 7 and 3. 1 times that of Earth, and their masses between five and seven times that of Earth. They are therefore intermediate planets between Earth and Neptune, but they are closer to their host stars (from 6 to 18 million km, compared to the 150 million km of the Earth-sun distance). Though these kinds of planets are non-existent in the solar system, observation programs have shown for several years that these super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are nevertheless abundant in our galaxy. These new planets detected and characterized with SPIRou will make it possible to better understand this new planetary population. It raises the question of how, in the history of their formation, some could have become gaseous planets or rocky planets, despite similar masses. Answering this question could help explain the dichotomy of the planets of the solar system, between small telluric planets and gas giant planets . More information: F. Kiefer et al, A sub-Neptune planet around TOI-1695 discovered and characterized with SPIRou and TESS, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2022). DOI: 10. 1051/0004-6361/202245129 Charles Cadieux et al, TOI-1452 b: SPIRou and TESS Reveal a Super-Earth in a Temperate Orbit Transiting an M4 Dwarf, The Astronomical Journal (2022). DOI: 10. 3847/1538-3881/ac7cea E. Martioli et al, TOI-1759 b: A transiting sub-Neptune around a low mass star characterized with SPIRou and TESS, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2022). DOI: 10. 1051/0004-6361/202142540 Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysics , Astronomical Journal Provided by Institut d'astrophysique de Paris.