About this world
Ross 508 b is a super-Earth orbiting Ross 508, a cool red dwarf (type M4.5V) 36.6 light-years from Earth. It is about 1.8 times the size of Earth (its size estimated from its mass), with at least 4 Earth masses (a minimum, measured by radial velocity). It completes an orbit every 10.8 days at 0.054 AU from its star, closer than Mercury is to the Sun, on a strongly elongated orbit (e = 0.33).
Its equilibrium temperature is about 294 K (21 °C), which places it in the optimistic 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.
It was discovered in 2022 by radial velocity with Subaru Telescope. The star wobbles toward and away from us, Doppler-shifting its spectrum.