Sibling Stars Found with Teenage Exoplanets

Beth Johnson
3 min readJul 22, 2021

Four new teenage planets were found orbiting two separate but related stars in data collected by the TESS spacecraft, adding to the theory of planetary formation.

IMAGE: Short-period planets, or those with orbits shorter than one day, are rare. Potential lava world TOI 1807 b, illustrated here, is the youngest example yet discovered. CREDIT: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle)

At first glance, this story was interesting because more exoplanets were found, but we’ve been announcing new exoplanets almost steadily for the last decade-plus. Digging a little deeper, this story involves a new paper…

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Beth Johnson

Planetary scientist, podcast host. Communication specialist for SETI Institute and Planetary Science Institute. Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/planetarypan