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A planet orbiting a red dwarf 25.6 light-years away has a year shorter than four Earth days.
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Every 3.97 days, the disk of the star TOI-1080 dims slightly. The shadow lasts a few hours — a planet passing in front of its star, like a fly in front of a lamp. Such 'eclipses' are caught by the TESSspace telescope, which watches thousands of stars at once.
TOI-1080 b is a world about the size of Earth, but without the familiar day-night cycle: its year is shorter than four Earth days.
The star TOI-1080 is a red dwarf — calm and dim. It lies 25.6 light-years away, a cosmic stone's throw. The planet orbits so close that it is heated to 368 kelvins, about the temperature of a sauna. Its mass is not yet precisely weighed, but it is no more than ten Earth masses. It could be a rocky sphere with a thin atmosphere, or even a bare rocky world.
Astronomers have checked: there are no other planets with radii from 0.9 Earth radii and orbital periods up to 7.7 days — only TOI-1080 b.
This world has already made the shortlist for the James Webb Space Telescope. In priority, it outranks four of the nine planets currently being studied in the 'Rocky Worlds' program. If TOI-1080 b has an atmosphere, the telescope will be able to see its composition. And that means another rocky world will become a little more familiar.