TOI-1452 b orbits a red dwarf star 100 light-years away from the Earth in the constellation Draco.
With the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM) in Canada and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, it was possible to prove that the exoplanet has about five times the mass of the Earth. Together with the determined radius one receives a clearly smaller density than with our Earth. From this it could be concluded that – unlike our home planet – it does not consist almost exclusively of rock and metal, but of lots of water.
Up to one third of TOI-1452 b could consist of water, which would make it a real ocean planet.
With a close orbit of 11 days, it is still in the Habitable Zone. The duo is orbited by another star at 97 AU.
Read more about it in the abstract by Charles Cadieux and his team here.
More details may soon be available from the James Webb Space Telescope: something we are very excited about.