Astronomers from the Search for Planets Eclipsing Ultra-cool Stars (SPECULOOS) project found an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting an ultracool dwarf star about 55 light-years away. The team concluded that the exoplanet, called SPECULOOS-3b, likely has a rocky surface and no atmosphere.
The SPECULOOS project is a network of six robotic telescopes, four in the Southern Hemisphere and two in the Northern Hemisphere, that aims to search for exoplanets around 1,600 nearby ultracool dwarf stars.
Moreover, some of the project’s scientists are part of an international collaboration that found a giant, but ultra-light exoplanet called WASP-193b. The exoplanet is about 1.5 times the size of Jupiter but has a mass only about one-seventh that of Jupiter. The planet is so light that the teams compare its density with that of cotton candy.