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The parade of interesting new exoplanets continues. Today, NASA issued a press release announcing the discovery of a new exoplanet in the Gliese 12 system, sized somewhere between Earth and Venus and inside the host star\u2019s habitable zone. Two papers detail the discovery, but both teams think that the planet is an excellent candidate for follow-up with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to try to tease out whether it has an atmosphere and, if so, what that atmosphere is made of.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n But before JWST knew where to look, another workhorse of the exoplanet hunt had to do its job. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) found this planet in a system only 40 light years away. That would make it the closest known example of a rocky, Earth or Venus-sized exoplanet in its star\u2019s habitable zone.<\/p>\n Gliese 12 is a red dwarf, only weighing about 27% of the Sun\u2019s weight. Due to the intricacies of fusion, this amounts to the star outputting about 60% of the light of our Sun, which, in turn, means its habitable zone is much closer than our own. The planet, known as Gliese 12b, orbits its parent star once every 12.8 days. But more importantly, it receives about 85% of the energy that Venus typically receives from the Sun.<\/p>\n \n