Alien worlds: Astronomers discover two new 'hot Jupiters'. Here's all about these exoplanets

An international team of astronomers, with the use of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), discovered two new "hot Jupiter" exoplanets.

The newly-discovered alien worlds, which have been named TOI-4377 b and TOI-4551 b, are both orbit distant red-giant stars. The discoveries were reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on November 8.

TESS, which was launched in April 2018, has been conducting a survey of nearly 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun. The survey is aimed at searching for transiting exoplanets, which range from small, rocky worlds to gaseous giants.

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To date, it has identified around 7,000 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), among which 402 have so far been confirmed.

A team of astronomers, headed by Filipe Pereira of the University of Porto, Portugal, confirmed spotting another two TOIs with the help of TESS. A transit signal was identified by them in the light curve of red-giant stars which are called TOI-4377 and TOI-4551, and are located 1,486 and 704 light years away.

In follow-up radial velocity observations, with the use of ground-based telescopes, the astronomers verified the planetary nature of these signals. "The planets were found during a search for transits around bright, low-luminosity red-giant branch stars observed by TESS in the southern ecliptic hemisphere," the researchers said, in the paper.

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Researchers label exoplanets as 'hot Jupiters'

The radius of TOI-4377 b is about 1.35 Jupiter radii and it has a mass of some 0.96 Jupiter masses. The planet has been observed to be orbiting its host every 4.38 days, from a distance of 0.058 AU, and its equilibrium temperature.

The radius of planet TOI-4551 b is about 6 per cent larger compared to Jupiter, while its mass is nearly 1.49 Jupiter masses. As per the observations, TOI-4551 b has an orbital period of nearly 10 days.

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They are both nearly 3.5 times larger compared to the sun and have effective temperatures of nearly 5,000 K. It has been estimated that TOI-4377 is nearly 3.88 billion years old, and TOI-4551 is around 1 billion years older.

Concluding the observations, the papers' authors stated that TOI-4377 b and TOI-4551 are both classified as "hot Jupiters" and are an example of giant alien worlds which have short orbital periods.

"All in all, the two newly confirmed planets enrich the existing population of known hot Jupiters orbiting evolved hosts. They should prove particularly relevant to demographic studies of short-period giant planets around red-giant stars, where only a handful of planets are known," explained the researchers.

(With inputs from agencies)