Ahmedabad, India – A team from the Physical Research Laboratory has discovered exoplanet TOI-6038A b, a dense, sub-Saturn-sized planet with a mass of 78.5 Earth masses and a radius of 6.41 Earth radii. The planet orbits an F-type star every 5.83 days in a circular orbit.
TOI-6038A b lies in the transition region between Neptune-like and gas giant exoplanets, a category absent in our solar system. The alien star around which this planet is orbiting is part of a binary system, accompanied by a K-type star, TOI-6038B, located 3217 AU away.
This marks the second exoplanet discovery using the PARAS-2 spectrograph at PRL's Mount Abu Observatory. It is the fifth exoplanet detection using the combined efforts of the PARAS-1 and PARAS-2 spectrographs. Preliminary analysis suggests TOI-6038A b has a massive rocky core comprising approximately 75% of its total mass.