There is a new instrument putting out science on the Hobby Eberly Telescope. The new Planet Finder Spectrograph is designed to measure the gravitational effects close in planets have on their stars while eliminating the possibility of a star or other object being present. This allows them to validate the discovery of planets found via the transit method, which look at dips in a stars light. Dips alone could be something else, like a massive star spot. By seeing the transit and the gravitational tugs together, it can become possible to confirm planets faster while getting more data with which to characterize the mass and size of the world. In a new paper in the Astronomical Journal, a team of Penn State astronomers has demonstrated the power of the Planet Finder Spectrograph by characterizing 2 Earth mass ice giant orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star 100 light years from Earth. This object, G 9-40b was originally discovered by the Kepler mission and now gets to move from the suspected planet to column to the list of confirmed planets orbiting alien stars.

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Sub-Neptune sized planet validated with the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (Penn State)