Figure 1: Artist’s impression of a super-Earth.
Being a red dwarf star, the host star of EPIC 206318379b has only 29.3 ± 3.0 percent the diameter and 26.4 ± 5.0 percent the mass of the Sun. The host star of EPIC 206318379b also has an effective temperature of 3214 ± 60 K and it is comparatively metal-rich, with approximately twice the Sun’s metallicity. A star’s metallicity indicates the abundance of elements that are heavier than hydrogen and helium.
EPIC 206318379b is relatively warm as it orbits close to its host star. A reflectivity of zero percent gives the planet an equilibrium temperature of 570 ± 36 K and a reflectivity of 40 percent gives the planet an equilibrium temperature of 502 ± 32 K. EPIC 206318379b is similar in size and receives a similar amount of insolation from its host star as the well-studied GJ 1214b. Follow-up observations to compare the atmospheric properties of these two planets can provide new insights to the atmospheres of such worlds.
Figure 2: Transiting planets around red dwarf stars cooler than 3400 K. Teruyuki et al. (2015)
Reference:
Teruyuki et al. (2015). “The K2-ESPRINT Project III: A Close-in Super-Earth around a Metal-rich Mid-M Dwarf”, arXiv:1511.08508 [astro-ph.EP]