The research area of detecting exoplanets, planets outside our own solar system, is a huge area of interest and funding. The importance of being able to detect these planets is they can give us information and an insight into planetary formation, to help the search for ”Earth- like” planets in the habitable zone, and of course the ever-present question of extraterrestrial life. So on order to attempt to gather information about these things we must be have solid detection techniques in place for exoplanets. A few of the important methods shall be discussed here, including the radial velocity method, transit method, direct imaging and gravitational microlensing among others . The Radial Velocity method, also known as Doppler spectroscope/method for detection of exoplanets is based on the principles that a star that has an orbiting planet will experience a gravitational force from the planet and hence move in its own small orbit in response. This will result in changes in the speed of the star as it moves towards and away from the observer i.e Earth and this shall be seen as variations in the radial velocity of the star with respect to the Earth. The radial velocity of the star can be worked out from the shifting of spectral lines in spectra of the star due to the Doppler effect and from here the variations can be determined and if they apply then the presence of an exoplanet can be confirmed. High precision spectrometers such as HARPS are required to preform observations as very high signal to noise ratio. HARPS is a high resolution fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. To maximize the chance of detecting an exoplanet certain requirements have to be met by potential targets. The targets chosen to be studied by HARPS are selected from COR... ... middle of paper ... ... Experiment” (OGLE) are two missions which monitor these microlensing events. Planets around low mass stars are easier to detect with this method as the ratio of the planet to stars mass will increase and so the gravitational microlensing effect will be larger. The characteristic scale of gravitational mi- crolensing is the radius of the Einstein ring RE. The Einstein ring occurs when lens and source are aligned and the light from the source is shaped into a ring through the gravitational lensing by the gravitational field of the ”lensing” ob- ject. R = Works Cited - Baranne, A. et al. 1996, A&AS, 119,373 - Bond, I.A. et al., 2002, MNRAS 333, 1 , 71-83 - Figueira, P. et al., 2013, A&A, 557, A93 - Koch, D. et al. 2010, ApJ ,713, L131?L135 - Mandel, K. & Agol, E. 2002, ApJ, 580, L171 - Sumi, T. et al. 2011, Nature, 473, 349?352 - Udry, S. et al. 2000, A&A, 356, 590
The majority of people have a very basic understanding of Earth, the planet we reside in, let alone the seven other planets in our solar system. The eight planets surrounding our star, the Sun, are separated into two very simple categories: Jovian and Terrestrial Planets. Throughout this paper, I will be explaining the basic structure and properties of the eight planets in our solar system, along with a brief history on the discovery of our solar system and what’s to come in the future. I will also go in depth into the difference between the Jovian Planets and the Terrestrial Planets, from the basic differences to the different structures and properties.
The Kepler mission has, thus far, provided invaluable information regarding extrasolar planets and systems. Although Kepler can no longer continue its primary mission, Second Light has presented researchers with the opportunity to salvage Kepler’s functions and add to the set of data Kepler has already collected.
The Kepler Mission is the first to be able to detect Earth-size planets around other stars. This is possible thr...
During the period from 1985 through 1990, Earth was aligned with the orbit of Charon around Pluto such that an eclipse could be observed every Pluto day. This provided opportunity to collect significant data which led to albedo maps defining surface reflectivity, and to the first accurate determination of the sizes of Pluto and Charon, including all the numbers that could be calculated therefrom.
Chandler, David L. "The New Search for Alien Intelligence." Astronomy Sept. 2013: n. pag. Student Research Center. Web. 9 Mar. 2014.
Later after Copernicus came Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, who confirmed some of Copernicus’ observations. Kepler provided concise evidence of planetary motion regarding their path around the s...
It is without a doubt that the most fascinating thing about space is the possibility of life elsewhere beside Earth. It is estimated that the Milky Way Galaxy itself contains about 300 billion stars. Each star contains planets and some planets might even have moons. With these findings, the question is no longer whether life exists elsewhere. The probability that Earth is the only place where life exists in the universe is far too slim. NASA has identified many planets that have similar conditions to Earth but most of these planets are hundreds of light years away so traveling there to find out if there’s any living organism is not easy. Luckily, scientific evidences have pointed out that one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, could be one of the places where life can exist. If the theories proposed by astronomers about Europa are true, life on Europa might not even be entirely different than life near the bottom of Earth’s oceans.
[5] Aura Astronomy [Internet]. Space-based vs. ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics; [cited 2014 May 20]; [about 2 pages]. Available from: http://www.aura-astronomy.org/news/archive/hst_vs_ao_2.pdf
Throughout time we have pondered the possibility of life existing beyond earth. Movies, television programs, and novels have been written about extraterrestrial beings. Often these beings bear strong resemblances to human beings, with slight alterations. When imagining what exactly an alien would look like, we are biased to believe that extraterrestrial beings are little green men with antenna's protruding from their head and they fly around the universe in huge spaceships. However, these little green men are figments of our imagination, as true life it has yet to be proven that life does, in fact, exist elsewhere in the universe. Scientists have tried for many years to find extraterrestrial life, unsuccessfully. Yet their work has not been completely in vain. There is evidence that life can and possibly does exist on other planets. Our job is to find direct proof of this hypothesis and to attempt to establish communication with these foreign beings.
"The Optical SETI Resource for Planet Earth." The Columbus Optical SETI Observatory. 1999. Columbus Observatory. 27 January 2000 http://www.coseti.org/.
our solar system, but they are unimportant compared to the nine major planets. In this paper I will discuss the planets and how they are each unique.
Ely, Justin, et al. "Updates to the Performance and Calibration of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope." IAU General Assembly 22 (2015): 55542.
One of the most common unanswered questions scientists find themselves asking is "Is there life on other planets?" Since the first famously documented UFO sighting in 1947, the idea of extra-terrestrial life has been debated almost non-stop. The subject has inspired many TV programs, such as The X-Files, and films (Mars Attacks, Independence Day, and the Men in Black films to name but a few). Scientists have come up with many new ideas and ways of trying to either prove or disprove the existence of life elsewhere.
The era of radio telescopes along with radio astronomy begun with Karl Guthe Jansky's discovery of an astronomical radio source in 1931. In the 20th century, many types of telescopes were developed for a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. (infrared telescopes--700 nm/ 0.7 µm - 1000 µm/1 mm, ultra-violet teles...