The Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) and the University of La Laguna have confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting within the habitable zone of HD 20794, a nearby star similar to the Sun. This international discovery, the result of more than two decades of observations, opens a window for future studies of Earth-like planet atmospheres.<\/p>\n
The search for planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars is crucial for understanding the possibility of life beyond Earth and for studying conditions similar to those that allowed life to develop on our own planet. In this context, HD 20794, a star with a mass slightly less than the Sun and located only 20 light-years away, has always been the subject of great scientific interest.<\/p>\n
The new planet is the third discovered in this system, following the discovery of two super-Earths announced more than a decade ago. Named HD 20794, it is a super-Earth with a mass six times that of Earth and takes 647 days to complete an orbit around its star, 40 days less than Mars. This orbit places it within the system's habitable zone, meaning it is at the right distance from its star to maintain liquid water on its surface, one of the key ingredients for life as we know it.<\/p>\n
It is precisely the combination of the distance between the planet and the star, and the proximity of the system, that makes it especially attractive, making it a perfect candidate for observations with the\u00a0Extremely Large Telescope<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(ELT), the 40-meter telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), or future space missions from space agencies\u00a0THAT<\/a>\u00a0y\u00a0POT<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the perfect type of planet for characterizing terrestrial planet atmospheres with next-generation instruments and missions,\u201d explains Nicola Nari, a researcher at\u00a0Lightbridges SL.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and a doctoral student at the University of La Laguna, and lead author of the study, published today in\u00a0Astronomy & Astrophysics<\/a>. \u201cIn fact, we hardly know of any similar planets,\u201d notes Alejandro Su\u00e1rez Mascare\u00f1o, a researcher at the IAC and co-author of the study, who insists that this new planet \u201cwill surely be one of the first we can study.\u201d.<\/p>\n This discovery was made possible by studying over 20 years of radial velocity measurements from spectrographs.\u00a0ESPRESSO<\/span><\/a>\u00a0y\u00a0HARPS<\/span><\/a>, both installed in the observatories of\u00a0THAT<\/a>, These instruments, among the most advanced in the world, are located in Chile and are supported by the IAC. They are capable of measuring the minute variations in the speed of stars associated with the gravitational pull of the planets in the system. \u201cVery few instruments in the world are capable of providing the level of precision necessary for a discovery like this,\u201d explains Nicola Nari.<\/p>\n With the aim of going even further, the team applied sophisticated processing techniques to the obtained spectra. \u201cWe worked on analyzing the data for years, analyzing and gradually eliminating all possible sources of contamination,\u201d explains Michael Cretignier, co-author of the study and researcher at the\u00a0University of Oxford<\/span><\/a>. This thorough analysis revealed the presence of a candidate signal, identified in 2022. The team immediately launched a new observation campaign to confirm it. \u201cAfter two years of adding new measurements, we can confirm that we have a robust detection,\u201d adds Nathan Hara, a researcher at the\u00a0Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Although the planet lies within the habitable zone of the solar system, it is too early to say whether it could support life. Its high mass and eccentric orbit make it a very different world from our own. Unlike the orbits of most planets in the Solar System, HD 20794 d's orbit is not circular but elliptical. Its distance from its star changes significantly, causing the planet to move from the outer edge of the habitable zone to the inner edge throughout its year.<\/p>\n \u201cHD 20794 d is not a second home for humanity, but its position and peculiar orbit give us a unique opportunity to study how habitability conditions vary over time and how these variations can influence the evolution of the planet's atmosphere,\u201d says Alejandro Su\u00e1rez Mascare\u00f1o, a researcher at the IAC and co-author of the paper.<\/p>\n Researchers Jonay I. Gonz\u00e1lez Hern\u00e1ndez, Atanas K. Stefanov, Rafael Rebolo, Carlos Allende Prieto and Enric Pall\u00e9 from the IAC also collaborated on this publication.<\/p>\n (Text and images provided by the IAC).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) and the University of La Laguna confirm the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting in the area\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,35,6,37,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astrofisica","category-departamentos","category-destacado","category-investigacion","category-portada-ull"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/planeta_zona_habitabilidad_ESP_4K-1-300x169.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}