Exoplanets Lab

There are many differences among our planets and moons in our Solar System. The geologic activity, composition, interior structure, magnetic field, and atmosphere are all factors that help give these planets and moons there identity. We have sent probes over the years to help examine these properties.

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,

A red dwarf star’s HZ, for example, would be much closer to the star itself compared with that of our sun. It is also important to determine the planet’s size and mass, which is imperative in deciding whether it can sustain an atmosphere. Maintaining an atmosphere is essential for life to exist and small a planet with a small gravitational force at its surface may not be capable of retaining one. The Kepler transit data can only measure planet masses, diameters, orbital periods, and parent star types and although this information is useful for determining habitable zones, further data is required to determine true habitability. The latter can be done by studying the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere.

I) Explain how we can deduce each of the properties and summarize the range of each

In the article called “Another Earth” by Alice Savage and David Wiece started with the sharing of the theory that life outside of Earth could exist. The author’s son thinks that it’s possible for other living being to exist and live on other planets, but the author had this theory as just a theory until the moment when scientist found a lot of planets that can potentially have live life on them. After that, he starts to share his memories about what people thought about life outside of Earth back in the 70’s. He shares this idea that to find a planet we have to look at stars. He talks about two methods of how we can find a planet looking at a star. Planets have their gravitational pull and when they are moving around a star we can see them

We cannot get close enough to observe with our own eyes, so there are different techniques that can be utilized to garner this information. This part of the equation is characterized as Fp, Fp is the fraction of stars that actually have planets. One method used in the study of potential solar systems is the transit method. This is the dimming of a star which can show a planet passing in front, which in turn proves that a planetary system exists around that star. This example is much like the experiment we did in class that showed the planets passing around the yellow sphere that was lit up inside.

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

Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz established another milestone, recording 51 Pegasi b, also known as Bellerophon, as the first established exoplanet in 1995. Located about 50 million light years away in the constellation Pegasus, Bellerophon is known as the first planet outside our solar system that orbits a star similar to our sun with the help of spectroscopy. Spectroscopy is described as the study of communication amongst matter and electromagnetic radiation. It used to consider visible light scattered according to its wavelength by a prism, but later the idea was developed to contain any contact with radiative energy as a function of its wavelength or frequency. Technological advances, most notably in high-resolution spectroscopy, led to

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

planets in our solar system came from. Does or did our star, the sun, have a

Batalha et al. (2011), Rowe et al. (2014), and Huber et al. (2014) validated and revised the data collected or simulated on Kepler planets. Natalie M. Batalha et al. (2011) utilized photometric and spectroscopic techniques to model the frequencies of Earth-sized planets near sun-like stars, which resulted in precise knowledge of the fundamental stellar properties, and thereby detected the nature of Kepler-10, which is the first rocky planet of Kepler and the smallest transiting exoplanet discovered to date. (Natalie M. Batalha et al 2011) Jason F. Rowe et al. (2014) used fundamental parameters to present fundamental planetary properties based on an analysis of Kepler light curves, spectroscopy based on ground analysis, imaging in high resolution, and Kepler light curves, (Jason F. Rowe et al 2014). The paper cited the research of Borucki et al. (2013) to back up the idea of effective temperatures of the stellar hosts to aid in investigations done by other researchers. Daniel Huber et al. (2014) provide revised properties of the many planetary systems the Kepler mission has discovered, using broadband photometry and asteroseismology in order to characterize 11,532 Kepler targets which were not classified in the KIC(Kepler Input Catalog)

All the habitable zone estimates assumes that these planets have an atmosphere. The exoplanet must accrete enough volatiles during formation to create an atmosphere and must be massive enough to sustain the atmosphere. The atmosphere also needs to be dense enough to stabilize surface temperature through climate feedback, such as the greenhouse effect. The atmosphere should absorb in the infrared spectrum but not in the visual

Furthermore, scientists have this big prediction in which they think that in about ten years they will prove themselves right. Technology develops more and more each day and in about ten years scientist might have advanced tools to travel through space and discover more. In some planets that scientists have discovered, they had found a gas giant. “A gas giant is a planet that is mainly composed of Helium and Hydrogen.” An example of a planet that has gas giants would be Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. If a gas giant is found in a planet, the gas giant can give many characteristics to the planet. A planet that contains a gas giant could be big and cold, sometimes the characteristic of the planet gives scientist a big clue that there is no life in that planet. For example, if the weather is to cold in that planet or if there is

of other planets such as Saturn or Mars are a great way of studying other planets surfaces

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