An international team of 50 astronomers discovered an exoplanet named Wolf 1069 b, orbiting a red dwarf star only 31 light-years from Earth, a press statement reveals.
The researchers believe the exoplanet may be a rocky world, meaning it would be a particularly rare find — less than 200 of the roughly 5,200 exoplanets discovered so far are rocky.
Wolf 1069 b has roughly 1.26 the Earth's mass and about 1.08 its size. The alien planet orbits in its star's habitable zone, meaning it is likely far enough for liquid water to exist on its 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," explained Diana Kossakowski, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and lead author on the new research. "It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-15th of the separation between the Earth and the sun."
Though Wolf 1069 b orbits so close to its star — meaning a year on the planet is equivalent to roughly half an Earth month — it is still in its star's habitable zone due to its red dwarf host star being much smaller than our sun. According to the researchers, who published their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the exoplanet receives approximately 65 percent of the solar radiance we receive on Earth.
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