COROT planets |
COROT planets |
May 3 2007, 02:20 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 22 Joined: 3-January 07 Member No.: 1551 |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6611557.stm
is reporting that Corot has found its first planet. I can't find an arxiv paper about this, or even a press release, but there are many here better at squirreling out data releases than me. 1.3Mj, 1.8Rj so it's a very inflated planet, 1.5-day orbit around a 'star quite similar to the Sun' might account for that. In the Monoceros field (Corot is now pointing at the Scutum/Aquila field). |
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May 9 2007, 08:27 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
The fundamental purpose of missions like Corot and Keplar (and "Ogle" type searches for lensing events as well as whatever transits they catch) is to establish the statistical patterns of planetary system occurrence.
Star: 1) What mass stars, 2) what metallicity stars 3) what environment stars (disk, halo, globulars.. ) 4) what age stars. (yes. the last 3 are all significantly correlated) Planet: Mass, Diameter, thus (density and gross composition) Orbit: Toasty, close, distant, eccentric vs circular. Before we build EITHER of the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, we need a good model of how many there will be of what sizes -- around what mass and metallicity stars -- in what orbits -- in the solar neighborhood. If we design and fly an inadequate TPF and find 3 barely-quasi-terrestrial planets for a budget of 3 billion dollars. Uh....... If we know a 1.5 billion dollar TPF will find 2 or 3 dozen substantially terrestrialish planets (.8 to 1.5 earth mass, similar stellar insolation), it may fly a lot sooner than that 3 billion doller mission. And... even though we'll not see a good spectrum or hardly anything from most terrestrial size or so planets Keplar and Corot may find, we'll get fabulous understanding of the population of planets out there and the type of planetary systems they are part of that we only half or quarter get from the doppler surveys. |
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