b'18 Carnegie Science|Fall 2020Cold Neptune Plus Two Temperate Super-Earths Orbit Nearby StarsA cold Neptune and two potentially habitableTheGJ433d is the nearest, widest, and coldest Neptune-like worlds are part of a cache of five newly discoveredplanet ever detected, lead author Feng said.exoplanets and eight exoplanet candidates foundThe newfound worlds were discovered using the radial orbiting nearby red dwarf stars. A team led byvelocity method, which detects a stars gravitational influence on Carnegies Fabo Feng and Paul Butler reported the work inthe orbiting planet and the planets gravitational effect on the star, Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series which creates tiny wobbles in the stars orbit. Due to their lower .The two potentially habitable planets are orbiting GJ180mass, red dwarfs are the primary class of stars around which and GJ229A, which are among the nearest stars to our Sun,terrestrial mass planets can be found using this technique. making them prime targets for observations by next- Cooler and smaller than our Sun, red dwarfsalso called M generation space-and land-based telescopes. They are bothdwarfsare the most common stars in the galaxy and the primary super-Earths with a mass at least 7.5 and 7.9 times our planetsclass of stars known to host terrestrial planets. Additionally, mass and orbital periods of 106 and 122 days, respectively. compared to other star types, red dwarfs can host planets at the The Neptune-mass planet was orbiting GJ433 at aright temperature for surface liquid water on much closer orbits distance at which surface water is likely frozen. It is probablythan those found in the so-called habitable zone around other the first of its kind for future direct imaging.types of stars.This artists concept is of GJ229Ac, the nearest temperate super-Earth to us that is in a system in which the host star has a brown dwarf companion. Image courtesy Robin Dienel, Carnegie Institution for Science'