Exoplanet Discoveries, discussion of the latest finds |
Exoplanet Discoveries, discussion of the latest finds |
Guest_PhilCo126_* |
Apr 21 2009, 11:10 AM
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#1
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Guests |
Well-known exoplanet researcher Dr Michel Mayor ( discoverer of Peg 51b with Dr Didier Queloz in 1995 ) today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, “e”, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist:
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-r...9/pr-15-09.html |
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Feb 24 2017, 12:33 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2106 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
QUOTE It's possible to resolve this, eventually, by measuring the orbital inclinations between pairs, which can be done by measuring the duration of transits, but this requires a lot of data, because in any particular instance, two planets could both transit their star even if their orbits are highly inclined because the line where their planes cross could happen to go right through the star. Wouldn't direct imaging also work (i.e. a starshade)? |
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Feb 24 2017, 02:38 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Wouldn't direct imaging also work (i.e. a starshade)? Yes, I got to that at the end of the post… "visually resolve…" One should note, though, that when we will be able to resolve certain cases, many others will remain unresolved, and something like the orbits around Trappist 1 are a tall order – these are on the order of 0.02 AU and are located 39 light years away. This is about 1/400th the angular size of a 1-AU orbit around Alpha Centauri! It seems quite likely that a whole generation (or several) of technological advances will be needed to go from the one to the other… and we're nowhere near able to achieve the easier of those two cases yet or in the foreseeable future. |
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