Astronomers Discover Potentially Habitable Planet Around 35 Light-Years From Earth

A team of scientists at the Université de Montréal confirmed the existence of a fifth planet in the L 98-59 planetary system after conducting a detailed study.

The fifth planet, named L 98-59 f, is located in the star’s habitable zone, where conditions could allow liquid water to exist.

L 98-59 is a small red dwarf star located just 35 light-years from Earth. NASA’s TESS space telescope discovered three small transiting exoplanets in the system in 2019. A fourth planet was identified through radial velocity measurements using the European Southern Observatory’s ESPRESSO spectrograph. These four planets orbit their parent star in a compact configuration.

The fifth planet, L 98-59 f, does not transit its host star, meaning it does not pass directly between Earth and the star. Its presence was revealed through subtle variations in the star’s motion, detected using radial velocity measurements from the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) and ESPRESSO instruments.

L 98-59 f receives nearly the same amount of stellar energy as Earth does from the Sun, placing it within the habitable or temperate zone, where liquid water could exist.

The research team was led by Université de Montréal and Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx) researcher Charles Cadieux.

“Finding a temperate planet in such a compact system makes this discovery particularly exciting,” said Charles Cadieux, a researcher at the Université de Montréal and the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx), who led the study.

“It highlights the remarkable diversity of exoplanetary systems and strengthens the case for studying potentially habitable worlds around low-mass stars,” he added.

The innermost planet, L 98-59 b, is 84% the size of Earth and about half its mass.

“With its diversity of rocky worlds and range of planetary compositions, L 98-59 offers a unique laboratory to address some of the field’s most pressing questions: What are super-Earths and sub-Neptunes made of? Do planets form differently around small stars? Can rocky planets around red dwarfs retain atmospheres over time?” said René Doyon, co-author of the study, professor at Université de Montréal, and director of IREx.

“These new results provide the most complete picture we’ve ever had of the fascinating L 98-59 system,” Cadieux said.

“They demonstrate the power of combining data from space telescopes and high-precision instruments on Earth, giving us key targets for future atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST],” he added.

The masses and sizes of the planets in the system are consistent with terrestrial characteristics.

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