Extrasolar Planets Essay

In 1979, Voyager 1 discovered Jupiter’s ring system. Jupiter has three rings. Galileo spacecraft suggested that these rings are formed when meteoroids hit Jupiter’s tiny closest moons.

The possibility of life beyond Earth is a tantalizing idea long prompting our species to wonder if there are other worlds where life exists. As space technology advances, the chances of finding life on other planets are now greater than ever. With new technologies such as satellites and solar panels, scientists are able to expand their exploration farther into our solar system. In 1995, an astronomer named Michel Mayor together with Didier Queloz discovered 51 Pegasi b. This was truly an incredible discovery that rocked the science community. Pledges b, a wobbling star the size of our sun, was slowly approaching, and according to Mayor’s

Throughout history humanity has been fascinated by the existence of extraterrestrial life. Today such ventures are in the development process and the discovery of life beyond our solar system, no matter how primitive, may soon become a huge(important?) scientific breakthrough. The three basic things that are required to consider a place even remotely habitable are water, a source of energy, and organic materials. Habitability also depends on other factors that must also be taken into consideration such as how close the planet is to its star (in the case of our solar system, the sun), how long the water and organic materials existed there, and the size and mass of the planet. One must not confuse habitable with inhabited. The term

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

Lee Billings' article in Scientific American, "Do 3 Habitable Super-Earths Really Orbit a Nearby Star?", reports on the possible discovery of additional planets by multiple sources. The planets in question orbit the Gliese 667 C star, and were detected by a team of astronomers composed of Gulliem Anglada-Escuede of Germany's Gottingen and by Hertfordshire's Mikko Tuomi, as well as by Philip Gregory in Canada. Both of these respective researchers utilized data from the HARPS spectrograph to study 7 planets orbiting the star, three of which may be able to sustain life. The researchers used HARPS data with statistical processes to discern the fact that the planets produced a "wobble" (Billings) on the star, which indicated that they could be actual planets.

much a star wobbles or goes around the centre of gravity of the exoplanet and star, the violent wobbles must conclude that 51 Pegasi b is a Jupiter sized exoplanet. Hd209458 b is also a Jupiter sized exoplanet, which may have been determined using the calculation or the wobble method, having similar affects to its host stars light spectrum as 51 Pegasi b has on its host star. Astronomers are unsure whether the exoplanet named Kepler 22b is a larger Earth or more of a mini Neptune, as it is boarder line between a rocky planet and a gas dwarf.

William Herschel, a famous astronomer, is best known for the discovery of Uranus. For many years Herschel used a telescope that he designed and built himself in order to watch this ball of light. He was sure it was a planet, he just needed to be able to prove it. It wasn’t until 1781 that he finally claimed it to be a planet.

Microlensing is the transitory alignment of a foreground star with a background star, which in turn intensifies the light from the background star. This can also occur if planets of the foreground star align with the background star, but this occurrence lasts for a shorter amount of time. This takes advantage of the seemingly random motion of stars, as the small movements cause the gravity of the fore star to act as a lens magnifying the light of the star behind it. Analysts observe the time of the alignment, alongside changes in the amount of light magnification to find and conclude important facts about the fore star and its system.

In the early days of astronomy, people thought that there was only a set number of planets and moons. It was argued between 6 and 7 of each. They started at 7 planets and then it was decided there was only 6. No one was out looking for any more planets, since they have already decided that no more existed. William Herschel, who wasn’t even an astronomer, but a musician, thought he saw a comet in the sky. He named it Uranus, the new planet.

The Investigation of the Large Outer Planets by the Space Probes, Voyager 1 and 2 and Casini

Clearly the better and stronger our telescopes and other methods used to evaluate the sky will result in further discoveries. Not only do we have Earth bound telescopes; we have telescopes in the sky that can get even closer to other matter – whether that be planets, stars, comets, asteroids, etc. The textbook also notes radial velocity and how the gravitational pull of a planet results in the star wobbling. “If the wobble happens to occur along our line of sight to the star, then we see small fluctuations in the star’s radial velocity, which can be measured using the Doppler effect” (Chaisson & McMillan, 2014, p 371) allowing us to estimate the mass of the planet (Chaisson & McMillan, 2014, p 371). I found this website: http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/how-to-search-for-exoplanets.html that gives three ways. They are noted as radial velocity (already stated); transit photometry (having to do with the brightness – or lack thereof – of a star when another “planet passes between it and the Earth” (How to Search for Exoplanets)), and Microlensing (stated as the only real method that is capable of discovering other planets at huge distances from Earth (How to Search for Exoplanets)). It further notes that while radial velocity can identify them within 100 light years, transit photometry can identify them more than 100 light years (100’s in fact), and transit photometry can find those that are thousands of light years away. I need to understand

In 1789 William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.[1,2,3,4,5] However, when he first stumbled upon it, he thought it was a comet. Based on what was then known about comets, it was determined that it was too far away from the sun and moving too slow to be a comet. Upon closer investigation, he discovered that it was indeed a planet. Interestingly enough, the only reason he was able to perform deeper investigation was that he was using a telescope.

This discovery was awarded to the former teacher and student because as the pair was searching systematically for pulsars. Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor using the 300-m radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. They discovered a pulsar which is a rapidly spinning neuron star emitting radio pulses at intervals that varied in a regular pattern, decreasing and increasing over and eight hour period. While Hulse observing the new pulsar, which was named PSR1913+16, he found that the pulses are often noticeable more than other times. During the observation of shifts in the pulses they found that the stars were equally heavy. A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that produces signals in earth detectors as its beam of radiation sweeps over earth once per rotation. The binary pulsar which is what was discovered has period of 59 milliseconds but shows an orbital period of seven hours and 45

Dad, I know you have been interested in how astronomers are able to detect planets that orbit stars other than the Sun (called exoplanets), since recently astronomers detected seven earth-sized planets orbiting a star that is 40 light years away. In my astronomy class, we learned the three techniques astronomers use to detect exoplanets. The first two techniques are an indirect method and the third one is a direct method. The direct method is by taking a picture of the exoplanet. The direct detection of an extrasolar planet means measuring light from the planet itself. With this technique astronomers are able to find out what the planet is really like and be able to identify the signs of life.

Since ancient times, the universe had captivated people’s imagination and curiosity. With the limitation on technology, early sky watchers were only capable of classifying objects they observed as either a star or a planet. During the twentieth century, with advancement in telescopes to see further into space with more accurate details, scientists were able to find numerous stars and planet like objects within the solar system. Scientists had no trouble classifying objects such as Uranus and Neptune as planets. However, the real trouble came when they discovered a planetary object called Ceres. Objects like Ceres and Pluto behaved similarly to regular planets. Because of the limitations on the technology at the time, it was very difficult