Exoplanet Research Paper

Astronomers have discovered evidence pointing towards a new planet suitable for life. This planet’s name is Proxima b, this planet orbits around the closest star to Earth besides the sun. This planet is mainly made of rock and can obtain water like Earth. In size Proxima b is a little bigger, but it orbits its sun Proxima Centauri in just 11 days.

This means it must orbit its parent star within the habitable zone - that is, the region where a planet’s temperature and atmospheric pressure is adequate to keep liquid water on the surface. This is hard to estimate, as we are assuming that all life needs water, whereas this may not be the case. If we use our own solar system as a guide, however, we can make an educated guess. We have 4 terrestrial planets, and 1 supports life. We think there may be a very small chance of life being present on Mars. We can therefore assign this value to be 2. Whether this is a reasonable figure when extrapolating to the entire galaxy is unknown at this

system. Scientists say that it is not a planet but look at the other planets in

The topic of finding life on another planet, or seeing if we are the only ones in our Universe has been a mystery to us since the beginning of time. One of the closest findings NASA has found to this topic was exoplanets. Exoplanet is defined as a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is the main telescope used to search for exoplanets that have similar features to Earth, and habitability on these exoplanets. NASA has found over 2,000 exoplanets so far, and out of those, there are only about eight exoplanets that seem to have a possibility on being a habitable exoplanets. Among these eight, Kepler 62f seems to be the most plausible.

Exoplanets are interesting to us for a number of reasons. By locating and observing them, we are able to gather a variety of useful data that tells us details about the planet, and then compare and contrast them to other exoplanets, as well as our own planet Earth. These comparisons are our attempt at better understanding the formation history of rocky planets such as the one we live on today, and furthermore understand the future of rocky planets based on their internal composition and proximity to their host stars.

The new planet is known as HD 219134b and it followed NASA's discovery of the planet Kepler-452b, discovered by the Kepler telescope. The Kepler-452b apparently resembles Earth much more than the HD 219134b exoplanet. It maintains a 385 orbit and its host star is only 20 percent brighter than the Earth's sun. However, HD 219134b is much closer to Earth than the Kepler-452b, and for that reason, scientists have high expectations from it.

Since the very beginning of exoplanet discovery, astronomers have been seeking to find an earth-like habitable planet. This search especially rose in importance in the 21st century when we were faced with intensifying problems of resource scarcity and environmental deterioration which directly influence our being on earth. In order to investigate regions in the Milky Way to discover Earth-sized exoplanets in and approximate to a habitable zone, NASA sent Kepler, a Discovery-class mission spacecraft to identify planets in the Habitable Zone of main sequence stars and to generate a better estimate of how many stars in the Milky Way have such planets (Overbye,

I believe the most interesting planet in our solar system, other than Earth, is Neptune. This is because Neptune is farther from the sun then most planets. To add to that, Neptune was discovered in 1846 by a French mathematician. This mathematician however did not discover Neptunes largest moon Triton. Plus, he wasn’t the only scientist involved in the discovery of Neptune. Discovering another planet beyond Uranus was thought to be improbable. But a collection of scientists noticed changes in the orbit of another planet, the planet slightly closer to our star than Neptune, Uranus. But before all of this happened, our old friend Galileo saw something with his small telescope. He saw what he thought could be a fixed star or something that could just be there effecting Uranus’ orbit.

Water on rocky planets can depend on many variables including the Carbon Oxygen ration of the host stars, which controls the content of water in the proto-planetary disk.

Earth may not be the only planet harboring life. Beyond our solar system, there are planets with similar and differing characteristics from Earth. These planets orbit stars other than our sun and are called ‘Exoplanets.’ The first confirmed exoplanet was discovered on January 9th, 1992. As of early 2018, there have been 3,705 exoplanets found and confirmed. Scientific evidence has proven the common existence of exoplanets by observing the planet’s transit in front of the star. As the planet travels between the telescope and its star, the light from the star dims, allowing scientists to determine the size of the planet. Scientists are also able to determine the distance between a star and a planet based on how long it takes the planet to orbit its star. One of these possibly habitable planet is Gliese

On April 18th, 2013, NASA’s Kepler satellite had detected an exoplanet in the Kepler-62 star system, Kepler-62e, one of the farthest exoplanets from its parent system within Kepler-62’s orbit. Using transit photometry, NASA could find a total of 5 exoplanets orbiting this star, including Kepler-62e. With a mass of around 36 earth masses and a radius 60 percent larger than Earth’s, Kepler-62e was a rather easy discovery using transit photometry. Transit photometry involves calculating the magnitude of a star over time; watching for deviations in the star’s magnitude to differentiate whether the deviation is normal or increased. For the record, any detected star system receives the designation “Kepler” in lieu of the Kepler satellite which detects them; planets are given the same name with the exception of a letter added onto the end.

Scientific discoveries are made as time moves forward, Kepler 62f has not been the exception in the scientific community. Kepler 62f, is an Earth size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light years from planet Earth in the constellation known by the name of Lyra. Kepler 62f orbits its host star every 267 days and is roughly 40 percent larger than Earth in size, the size of Kepler 62f is known, but its mass and composition are not. However, based on previous scientific discoveries of similar size landmarks that are rocky, scientists are able to determine its mass by association of scale. Very much similar to our solar system, Kepler 62 is home to possible habitable zone worlds; Kepler

One of the first things to determine when looking for life in space is whether or not water is present on the exoplanet. Liquid is a necessary medium for carbon-chains to eventually develop into life, and water is not only cosmically abundant, but is also a great facilitator for this process. The next is the presence of organic materials needed to construct complex organic molecules, such as carbon. Until we receive evidence heavily suggesting otherwise, the search for life in space should focus on carbon-based life, as it's the only sort that we are sure exists (as much as any of us can be sure of our own existence). The age and position of an exoplanet is also largely relevant to discovering life. It took approximately 1 billion years for

In the 18th Century, William Herschel discovered the first true planet, Uranus and became known as one of the greatest astronomers of his time ("Uranus Discovered: Completely By Accident”). To this day, astronomers and scientists continue to study whats beyond Earth as well as planets known as exoplanets which are outside of our solar system. The methods and tools used for the discovery of planets has changed throughout time through use of technology and skills but there is still a whole world of knowledge that needs to be found in order to see farther into what is beyond modern day telescopes (“20 Years of Exoplanets"). The discovery of planets has always been a large interest to people from all around the world and new knowledge is always being looked for. Today in 2015 the Kepler Space Telescope is used to look at planets both in our Solar System as well as planets outside the solar system known as exoplanets (Abt, 1016). Astronomers are currently working to try to improve technology to be able to see even farther into outer space in hopes to discover new planets or even planets that are like Earth. The hope of scientists is that they will be able to create

The first exoplanet found, Peg 51 b, challenged the then present theory of giant planet formation. Models of giant planet formation stated that Jupiter-like planets form at distances of 4-5 AU, AU being the distance from