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Astronomers Confirm 'Mega-Earth' GJ 523b, 23 Times Earth's Mass on a Polar Orbit

22 August 2026National
Astronomers Confirm 'Mega-Earth' GJ 523b, 23 Times Earth's Mass on a Polar Orbit

Astronomers confirmed GJ 523b, a roughly 170-million-year-old exoplanet so dense it has been classed as a new planetary type — a 'mega-Earth'. Weighing about 23 times Earth's mass yet only 2.55 times its radius, it has a bulk density near 7.8 g/cm³, implying an almost entirely rocky body with a surprisingly thin atmosphere that standard planet-formation models struggle to explain. First flagged by NASA's TESS, it was confirmed using the WIYN 3.5-metre Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. It circles an orange K-dwarf star about 87 light years away every 17.75 days on a steeply tilted, likely polar orbit.

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TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was launched by NASA in 2018 and finds planets by the transit method | The transit method detects dips in starlight, while the radial-velocity method measures a star's wobble to derive planetary mass | The Kepler Space Telescope (2009-2018) was TESS's predecessor and discovered over 2,600 exoplanets

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