Phillip Scott, Bradley Walter, Quanzhi Ye, David Mitchell, Leo Heiland, Xing Gao, Alejandro Palado, Burkhonov Otabek, Jesus Delgado Casal, Colin Hill, Alberto Garcia, Kevin B. Alton, Yenal Ogmen, Vikrant Kumar Agnihotri, Alberto Caballero
We report the discovery of a new exoplanet candidate orbiting the star GJ 3470. A total of three transits were detected by OKSky Observatory: the first one on December 23, 2019, the second one on February 27, 2020, and the third one on May 3, 2020. We estimate an average transit depth of 0.84 percent and duration of 1 hour and 2 minutes. Based on this parameter, we calculate a radius of 9.2 Earth radii, which would correspond to the size of a Saturn-like exoplanet. We also estimate an orbital period of 66 days that places the exoplanet inside the habitable zone, near the orbital distance at Earths equivalent radiation. Another twelve potential transits that do not belong to GJ 3470 b are also reported. Despite our candidate for GJ 3470 c still has to be confirmed by the scientific community, the discovery represents a turning point in exoplanet research for being the first candidate discovered through an international project managed by amateur astronomers.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07373
Submitted 14 July, 2020; originally announced July 2020.
