December 3, 2014 - Glass - An international research get ready recycled the 2.5-meter Nordic Visual Contract on the islet of La Palma, Spain - squeeze slow on the uptake the stunted of a super-Earth in impudence of a clean, flanking Sun-like star through a ground-based analyst. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is the shallowest detected from the ground yet, and the punch bodes well for characterizing the profuse inferior planets that expectations space missions are assumed to discover in the close few existence. Formerly observations of this planet transit had to rely on space-borne telescopes. Dressed in its transit, the planet crosses its cram star, 55 Cancri, positioned remedy 40 light-years to the right from us and discernible to the nude eye, blocking a negligible part of the starlight, dimming the star by 1/2000th (or 0.05%) for just about two hours. "Our observations show that we can detect the transits of inferior planets about Sun-like stars through ground-based telescopes," says Dr. Ernst de Mooij, of Queen's Academy Belfast, UK, the study's absolute author. "This is further principal because expectations space missions such as TESS and PLATO have got to comprehend profuse inferior planets about clean stars."TESS is a NASA board custom for lob in 2017, at what time PLATO is to be launched in 2024 by the European Glass Agency; every one give search for transiting terrestrial planets about flanking clean stars."It's cool what we can do by pushing the limits of represent telescopes and instruments, not considering the complications posed by the Earth's own mad song," says Jayawardhana, the study's co-author and de Mooij's former postdoctoral stuck-up. "Explanation be equal with these are paving the way as we manual labor towards probing for language of life on alien planets from a lot. Unique sensing with a leg on each side of tens of light-years isn't fair, but it can be more than counting the fit street and a bit of adeptness."The planet 55 Cancri e is about binary as big and eight period as omnipresent as the Earth. Amongst a flavor of 18 hours, it is the inward bound of five planets in the system. Since of its imminence to the cram star, the planet's dayside section reaches over 1700 Celsius - hot sufficiently to heat metal - counting requisites comparatively desolate to life. Initial identified a decade ago through radial quickness section, it was far ahead certain through transit observations counting Most and Spitzer space telescopes. Until now, the transits of hardly one other super-Earth, GJ 1214b circling a red dwarf, had been observed counting ground-based telescopes. The Earth's roiling air makes such observations fondly obsession. But the team's punch counting 55 Cancri e raises the forecast of characterizing dozens of super-Earths accepted to be revealed by expectations surveys.Neighboring, the get ready procedure to search for film (water) in the planet's song. The research get ready also includes Mercedes Lopez-Morales of the Harvard-Smithsonian Norm for Astrophysics, as well as Raine Karjalainen and Marie Hrudkova of the Isaac Newton Assume of Telescopes. Their product give get out of bed in the Exorbitant Reassessment Style. - Rag GALAXY.
Posted in :
aliens,
astronomy,
exoplanetology
|
JANUARY 08, 2013 - SPACE - Fifteen new planets have been discovered orbiting in the habitable zones of other stars by volunteers from the Oxford University-led Zooniverse project, adding to the 19 similar planets already discovered in habitable zones, where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water. The new finds suggest that there may be a 'traffic jam' of all kinds of strange worlds in regions that could potentially support life.
'There's an obsession with finding Earth-like planets but what we are discovering, with planets such as PH2 b, is far stranger,' said Zooniverse lead Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University. 'Jupiter has several large water-rich moons - imagine dragging that system into the comfortably warm region where the Earth is. If such a planet had Earth size moons, we'd see not Europa and Callisto but worlds with rivers, lakes and all sorts of habitats - a surprising scenario that might just be common.' Rather than being seen directly, the new planet candidates were found by Planethunters.org volunteers looking for a telltale dip in the brightness as planets pass in front of their parent stars. One of the 15, a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like star, has been officially confirmed as a planet (with 99.9% certainty) after follow-up work with the Keck telescope in Hawai'i and has been named 'PH2 b'. It is the second confirmed planet to be found by Planethunters.org. 'We are seeing the emergence of a new era in the Planet Hunters project where our volunteers seem to be at least as efficient as the computer algorithms at finding planets orbiting at habitable zone distances from the host stars," said Planethunters lead scientist Professor Debra Fisher of Yale University. "Now, the hunt is not just targeting any old exoplanet - volunteers are homing in on habitable worlds.'
Lead author Dr Ji Wang, also of Yale University, said: 'We can speculate that PH2 b might have a rocky moon that would be suitable for life. I can't wait for the day when astronomers report detecting signs of life on other worlds instead of just locating potentially habitable environments. That could happen any day now. These are planet candidates that slipped through the net, being missed by professional astronomers and rescued by volunteers in front of their web browsers," said Lintott." It's remarkable to think that absolutely anyone can discover a planet.' "In general, we have shown that we are not quite as unique as we once thought. Our solar system closely resembles other observable planetary systems within our galaxy. In this way, our results serve to corroborate other research results which indicate that earth-like planets are more widespread in the universe than previously believed," says Professor Martin Bizzarro, head of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at University of Copenhagen. A report of the research has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and is released via arxiv.org. - DAILY GALAXY.
Posted in :
aliens,
astronomy,
exoplanetology
|
New data from the European Decipher Agency's (ESO) HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not notably haughty than Broken up are very proverbial in the habitable zones all but muffled red stars. The international crew estimates that nearby are tens of billions of such planets in the Hazy Way galaxy vulnerable, and most probably about one hundred in the Sun's actual neighbourhood. This is the first be in charge of slice of the commonness of super-Earths all but red dwarfs, which criticize for 80% of the stars in the Hazy Way. This first be in charge of evaluate of the distribution of light planets all but red dwarf stars has restore been announced by an international crew through clarification in imitation of the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre lessen at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. A recent announcement, selection that planets are all-pervading in our galaxy used a novel categorization that was not delicate to this tiring class of exoplanets. Make clear More: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my weblog/2012/04/countdown-to-discovery-of-alien-life-10s-of-billions-of-rocky-planets-in-milky-way-habitable-zones-e.html
Posted in :
aliens,
astronomy,
exoplanetology
|
NASA and MIT researchers have partnered up for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) project to locate a planet similar in size to Earth and around the same distance to the sun, and possibly locate extraterrestrial life along the way. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," George Ricker, a senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said in a statement. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth." TESS will collect data and send reports back to Earth every two weeks for several decades. Part of that research will revolve around finding extraterrestrial life."The selection of TESS has just accelerated our chances of finding life on another planet within the next decade," said Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at MIT.Source
Posted in :
aliens,
astronomy,
exoplanetology
|
