Exoplanet Research Paper

NASA discovered a system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven rocky planets could have water which is a key to life and three of them are firmly located in the habitable zone. This system is about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth. Because of locating outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets. This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, name of telescope in Chile. Researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system and then discovered more to seven by several ground-based telescopes. Moreover, NASA used data from Spitzer to measure the sizes of the seven planets and estimates the masses and density of six of them. The data indicated that they are likely to be rocky and could have liquid water on their surfaces but the mass of the seventh has not been estimated yet. Scientists assumed it could be an icy like snowball world. The temperature of TRAPPIST-1 star is cooler than our sun,

What do you think we would do if someone from anther planet landed in the U.S and claimed it as his territory because he had discovered it? How would you feel about this?

Trappist 1 is a new system that is orbiting the Trappist dwarf star. The fourth, fifth, and sixth planets farthest from the star are habitual enough that liquid water could pool on the surface. The orbit of Trappist-1 could fit into the orbit of Mercury. It is a fraction of our sun and is not much bigger then Jupiter.

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to: 1) Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars; 2) Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets; 3) Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems; 4) Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets; 5) Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; 6) Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

Which proves that the distance of an exoplanet to its host star is important for astronomers to look for when finding Earth-like exoplanets. Astronomers use a term called the goldilocks zone to determine if an exoplanet can form liquid water on its surface. A goldilocks zone is simply a distance that an exoplanet must be to form liquid water, and the goldilocks zone is different depending on the size and temperature of the star that an exoplanet is orbiting. If an exoplanet is orbiting too close around its host star, the temperature on the exoplanet will be too hot to form liquid water ion its surface as the star will cause any liquid water that is on the exoplanets surface to boil into steam. If an exoplanet is too orbiting too far from its host star, it will receive very little starlight and the surface of the exoplanet will be too cold to melt ice into liquid water, so instead the water is frozen to form ice. Astronomers use the transit method to determine how close an exoplanet is orbiting around its host star, and have determined that an exoplanet that orbits once a week will be too close to its host star, and temperatures on the surface will be too hot. An exoplanet

This experiment was conducted to study and investigate if extraterrestrial life exists upon the exoplanet TRES 2. It was hypnotized that TRES 2 did not sustain the qualifications to support extraterrestrial existence. The results from this testing conclude the hypothesis was correct, with research as an addition from the luminosity testing it has been knowledge that TRES 2 reflects less than 1% of light making it one of the darkest exoplanets currently discovered. Light is a crucial element in the building blocks of life, it is the most important factor that influence the way life evolved on Earth. From photosynthesis, which is responsible for making producing nutrients in plantae’s and meeting our energy requirements. Furthermore TRES 2 orbits

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.

Currently, there is only one planet we know of to host life, and that is our home planet Earth. The question remains as to what is exactly needed for a planet to be considered habitable, but scientists have developed a handful of criteria to help distinguish what planets could be “just right” for life. The ongoing search for possible habitable planets has produced many remarkable findings but nothing quite as extraordinary as the discovery of the system Trappist-1. According to nasa.gov, it is the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, and it meets the criteria to possibly sustain life (“NASA Telescope Reveals” p.1). This discovery poses a likely answer to the question “are we alone” and drives our search for finding out more about what is out there.

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.

An exoplanet can be defined as a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system. One of the many exoplanets that could possibly be habitable in the near future are far away. For example, Kepler-186 is around 500 light years aways to put that in perspective that is around 5,878,625,373,183.607731 Miles away. That is why we know so little about these planets that could support life on them.

The main searches for exoplanets are being done by space missions. The Kepler space mission is finding the most exoplanets, however there are many other space missions like Gaia, MOST, CoRoT, and SWEEPS, that are finding exoplanets in habitable zones. There are also ground missions including the Anglo Australian Planet Search and HARPS which is done in Geneva. This graph shows all the exoplanets found that are less than 10Me or 1.5Re mapped on the habitable zone. The sizes of the circles indicate the radius of the planet, which has been estimated, if not

The Hubble telescope is a compound telescope design where light enters the telescope through the opening and bounces off the primary mirror to a secondary mirror. Then the secondary mirror reflects the light through a hole in the center of the primary mirror to a focal point behind the primary mirror. At the focal point, half transparent mirrors distribute the light to the various scientific instruments. The Hubble Telescope mirrors are made of glass and coated with multiple layers of pure aluminum that are three-millionths of an inch thick and a coat of magnesium fluoride that is one-millionth of an inch thick to make them reflect visible, infra-red and ultraviolet light. The primary mirror weighs 1825 pounds and the secondary mirror weighs in at 27.4 pounds.

As proposed in an article posted on amazing space.org, “The telescope, a basic reflector with a 94.5 in (2.4 meters) mirror.” While also having being a second mirror that the light bounces to to. Within that mirror, many instruments were compacted together that allowed for clear and visible views in infrared and ultraviolet light. It was different compared to any other ground based telescope whereas it allowed astronomers to observe and witness details that had never been seen before due to Earth being in the way for those other telescopes. The telescope revolves around the earth completely every ninety-seven minutes at the speed of five miles per second, allowing for many observations in space. The observations occur when light hits the main mirror and then bounces towards the second mirror in which the second one focuses the light. The telescope began to be created in 1977 and was originally supposed to launch during the year of 1985. Unfortunately an accident had occurred when a space shuttle challenger exploded and flights into space took a halt. It was finally launched on April 4th of 1990 once the halt had stopped. The improved observations had begun and the history of astronomy had changed. Unfortunately there were some minor setbacks that had to be dealt with. One setback was that the primary mirror was ground incorrectly in which the curve of it was too flat. It was off just

Humans have longed to believe in extrasolar planets, as surely there have to be planets elsewhere in the universe. Claims of supposedly discovered extrasolar planets can be dated back to 1855 when Captain S. W. Jacobs from the Madras observatory, claimed that he had discovered a planet orbiting a binary system (Jacobs 1855), all the way up until 1991 when a team of astronomers announced then retracted the alleged discovery of an extrasolar planet around a pulsar star (Lyne and Bailes 1992). Planets are extremely hard to detect as they are a very faint light source and the light from its parent star is much brighter and essentially blocks out light from a planet (Winters 1996). It was not until 1992 when the first exoplanets were confirmed

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.