The Shiro Copr - A remarkable discovery once again reinforces the search for a new world beyond the Solar System.
For NASA scientists, a super-Earth planet was found 154 light-years away from Earth, precisely in the Lyra constellation, northern sky.
This discovery originated from a faint flash of light captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in March 2025.
After further analysis, the signal pointed to a new object now known as TOI-1846 b—a super-Earth believed to have unique characteristics.
This research was led by Abderahmane Soubkiou along with his team at the Oukaimeden Observatory, Morocco.
They work across continents with astronomers from all over the world. The research results have been published through the scientific platform arXiv owned by Cornell University, New York.
According to the study, these findings make TOI-1846 b very suitable for mass determination through RV observations or space missions.
This is possible with the MAROON-X instrument, a high-precision radial velocity spectrograph.
This instrument is designed to detect Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of M-dwarf stars using the radial velocity method.
Katai M stars themselves are low-mass stars with very compact planetary systems, often with several rocky planets.
They are among the most common types of stars in the Milky Way galaxy and have very long lifespans.
If the observations are completed, the planet TOI?1846 b will join the key planet sample, which is necessary to test various mechanisms that are suspected to operate in the formation and evolution of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes around M-dwarf stars.
This discovery is expected to contribute to refining the exact location of the radius valley for small planets orbiting bright M-dwarf stars.
Thus, it will eventually enhance the understanding of the process of planet formation and evolution.
How does TESS observe TOI? 1846 b?
NASA confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth after a team combined TESS data with telescope images, ground-based light measurements, and older star photographs.
Launched on April 18, 2018, TESS scans one by one a huge section of the sky. Currently, more than 7,600 such objects have been marked as "TESS Objects of Interest."
One of them is TOI?1846 (the star near TOI?1846 b). It is a Red Dwarf star about 40 percent the size and mass of the Sun.
Four wide-field cameras of TESS successfully observed a super-Earth planet or TOI 1846 b around the star.
Observers validated TOI 1846 b using TESS and multi-color ground-based photometric data, high-resolution imaging, and spectroscopic observations.
The results show that the planet orbits its star in less than four days, so it is much closer to its sun than the distance between Mercury and the Sun in the Solar System.
More detailed observations show that this planet is almost twice as wide as Earth and about four times as heavy.
This combination of size and weight makes it less dense than solid rock, but heavier than planets with thick gas envelopes.
Based on this, scientists speculate that the planet may have a solid ice layer beneath it, with a thin atmosphere or even a shallow ocean above.
If that is true, there is a possibility that water can exist in several forms even at a surface temperature estimated to be around 315 degrees Celsius.
This article has been published in Kompas.com
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