About this world
LHS 1140 b is a super-Earth orbiting LHS 1140, a cool red dwarf (type M4.5V) 48.9 light-years from Earth. It is about 1.7 times the size of Earth and holds 5.6 Earth masses. It completes an orbit every 24.7 days at 0.095 AU from its star, closer than Mercury is to the Sun.
Its equilibrium temperature is about 226 K (−47 °C), which places it in the conservative habitable zone: the band where liquid water could exist on a rocky surface. By the "cosmic shoreline", it has likely held on to an atmosphere. Its atmosphere has already been studied: 19 spectroscopic observations, all of them with the James Webb Space Telescope.
It was discovered in 2017 by transit with MEarth Project. A planet crosses its star and dims it by a tiny, periodic fraction. LHS 1140 has 2 known planets; the others are LHS 1140 c.