A new Super-Earth has been discovered orbiting an M-dwarf star about 137 light-years away.
The planet is named TOI-715b and is about 1.55 Earth's radius.
It is inside the star's habitable zone, which is the region around a star where a rocky planet receives between 0.42 and 0.842 as much solar insolation as Earth does.
The habitable zone is a crude way to identify planets that may have liquid water.
There is a small planet radius gap or sub-Neptune radius gap (also called the Fulton gap and the photoevaporation valley) between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii.
The Fulton Gap tells us something about how some planets lose mass, and planets inside this gap are crucial in furthering our understanding of the factors that sculpt it.
(It's extremely unlikely that no planets form in this radius gap).
– Astronomers want to study planets in the valley to see what they can learn about planetary formation and post-formation evolution.