Astronomers have launched a new program known as ATREIDES to study a mysterious "desert" in space. But unlike the deserts of the planet Arrakis conquered by Paul Atreides in the "Dune" novels by Frank Hebert, this desert describes an absence of planets with masses up to around 20 times the mass of Earth that orbit close to their stars, planets scientists refer to as "hot Neptunes."
The first planets studied by the ATREIDES program, the two worlds of the said in a statement describing the ATREIDES program.
To understand why this class of extrasolar planet, or " 10 years of exoplanet observations, the Neptunian desert has become increasingly complex. Areas further out from stars than the Neptunian desert have been found to be more generously populated with Neptune-sized worlds. This more temperate realm with more Neptune-like exoplanets has come to be known as the "savanna" of the Neptunian desert.