A good omen for future discoveries is the latest discovery of a super-earth by the Subaru telescope. Just 37 light-years from Earth, the exoplanet makes its elliptical orbit around the red dwarf Ross 508 in eleven days. It is partly in the habitable zone and is therefore a good candidate for life and liquid water.
The four earth mass exoplanet Ross 508B is the first discovery of the new Subaru telescope instrument "Infrared Doppler" (IRD). The infrarot instrument developed at the Astrobiology Center in Japan is to continue to provide signs of planets around red dwarfs in the future. The successful start now gives hope for even better candidates.
About three-quarters of all stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs. For this reason, they are also frequently found in our immediate neighborhood. This makes them important targets in the search for life and nearby exoplanets. However, due to low temperature and radiance in the visible, they are difficult to investigate. In the infrared range, they emit significantly more radiation instead. Instruments such as »Infrared Doppler« make use of this by means of the method of the same name.
It still has to be clarified whether liquid water can actually be found on the planet. However, it is a good sign of future projects that the first discovery of the instrument produces an extrasolar planet that is so close to the habitable zone. "We have continued our development and research with the hope of finding a planet that is just like Ross 508b," commented Bun'ei Sato, professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the main responsible for the research group.
