The Challenge In Finding New Earth-Like Exoplanets.

A couple of things happened this month that may make it easier to find other Earth-like planets.

Probably the more important of the two was that for the first time, a ground based telescope has found a super Earth orbiting around 55 Cancri.

The Nordic Optical Telescope on the island of La Palma, Spain was used to find the planet.  The telescope is only 2.5-meters, not large compared to a great many other telescopes, but it does have all the equipment necessary for the task.  Prior to this success, scientists had to wait for time or data from one of the space based telescopes to get data.  You can imagine the waiting line for that to happen.

55 Cancri is located 40 light-years away and is visible to the naked eye. During its transit, the planet crosses 55 Cancri and blocks 1/2000th (about 0.05%) of the stars light for almost two hours. Given what we know about the star, it means that the planet is about twice the size of Earth.

The other innovation that happened is that Cornell University’s Institute for Pale Blue Dots has shown where ( and when) other Earths are most likely to be found.  BTW, that tiny, tiny spot is the Earth as seen from Saturn, not even half way out of the solar system.  Now don’t your problems seem a little smaller?

What makes this research so important is that young Earth like planets will be forming farther out away from their stars.  That gives another location to look in developing systems, like the Pleiadies. A big as space is, knowing where to look is half the battle (just ask the Dark Matter/Energy people…they are still in the dark!!! Get it!! Oh, I slay me sometimes….and I digress easily).

So now it is possible for ground based telescopes to find exoplanets, and research know where to look.  Kepler may have started the avalanche of new planet discoveries, but there are a lot more to find.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +, or by email.

Norman

Don’t Eat Me!!!

Exoplanets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c are on the dinner plate for the star that they orbit.

Soon, as far as astronomical terms go, the planets will just be destroyed by the ever expanding star as its nuclear fuel runs out and ongoing war with gravity is lost.

Sadly, in about 130 million to 155 million years from now, the planet will disappear.  However, the planets will be stripped of anything far sooner than that.

Once the star increases in size about 3 percent, most of any atmosphere on the inner most planet will be gone.  Baked away by the intense heat.  The outer planet won’t fair much better, but it will last a little longer, but the same outcome is in store for it.

Unfortunately, the same fate awaits us.  Luckily, it is about a billion years away (give or take a few hundred thousand years) before the Earth is uninhabitable.  To put that in perspective, we humans only started living indoors and painting pictures on cave walls about 9,000 years ago.

I think we have a pretty good chance of finding a new home by then (provided we don’t bake ourselves like Venus first).

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

RAS General Meeting Recap.

This month’s speaker for the RAS, was Heather A. Knutson.  She is an assistant professor in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.  She is working onthe physics and chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres, planet formation and migration, and the search for new low-mass eclipsing planetary systems.

As usual, our meetings are held at Cossentine Hall at La Sierra University.

 

Dr. Knutson spoke about her research into smaller exoplanets.  Most of the exoplanets are large, like Jupiter large.  She is trying to find Earth analogous planets.

She also spoke about some of the planets that have been discovered.

One particular planet has 6,000 mph winds and liquid rock for clouds!  Trust me, the science works, it just seems odd.

She also explained that instead of looking at large suns for Earth sized planets, they are starting to look as smaller suns.  It makes perfect sense.  If you can’t make the planet larger to detect, look at smaller suns and the planet gets bigger by default.

It was also interesting to note that Kepler imaged a very, very tiny part of our galaxy.  That spot with the red arrow is as much as we have looked at to date.  There are a lot of other exoplanet missions planned, but the galaxy, and the universe, are really big.  Lots more data to come.

Remember, everyone is welcome at the meetings and you can find out about the topics by visiting http://www.rivastro.org.

 

 

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

Let The Battle Begin!

In this corner, the newcomer, SPHERE!

The Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch telescope trained and managed exclusively by the European Space Agency.

And in this corner, another newcomer, the Gemini Planet Imager! Born and trained in North America.

Both these bruisers are set to battle it out for the title of King of Exoplanet imaging!

While most of their contemporaries find planets the old fashioned way, these two imager’s are going to take actual pictures of exoplanets!

Fighting it out down in Chile.  This battle is not to be missed!  And who will win this battle?  Why, we will!  Good luck to both teams and may the data flow begin.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

I’m Kinda Sensitive.

No, not me.  I’m a ruff an tumble sort of fellow.  Except when I am sick (like now) and want some mothering.  Oh well, such is life.

The sensitive kind I am referring to is a new Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) camera that was installed on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope.  Perhaps they need to stop naming everything Gemini, it could get redundant (get it?  Gemini?  The Twins? Redundant!  Oh, I still slay me).

According to the GPI website: “GPI is an extreme adaptive-optics imaging polarimeter/integral-field spectrometer, which will provide diffraction-limited data between 0.9 and 2.4 microns. The system will provide contrast ratios of 10^7 on companions at separations of 0.2-1 arcsecond in a 1-2 hour observation.”  Which means it is a really sensitive camera.

What is even more amazing is that the GPI was built at the American Museum of Natural History, not NASA or any other space agency.

So what can this new camera do?  The image above (processed by Christian Marois, NRC Canada) is our first actual real image of an exoplanet!  This is the first direct method that scientists have to confirm the existence of exoplanets.  Before, exoplanets were inferred from data.

It sort of looks like IBM’s images of atoms.  Although IBM has the ability to manipulate atoms to forming cool pictures (and even movies), I don’t think that we will have that much sway over planetary objects.

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman

A Weighty Problem.

After all the holiday cheer, and eating, you may find yourself (like me) with a few extra things that you didn’t ask Santa for…like pounds.  Around the middle, not currency.  It turns out that science has weight problems also, not like mine, but just as important.

With all these new planets that we have been finding around the Milky Way, scientist need to know more about them, like their weight (ok, technically it is mass, but that would ruin my metaphor).

Now that we know that other planets exist, it isn’t enough to just keep finding them, we actually need to know more details about each one.  With over 2400 already possible, the sooner we can figure out what types of planets are orbiting distant stars, the faster that we determine which of them are habitable and can concentrate more resources on those planets.

Fortunately, Julien de Wit, the very smart man above, has invented a new way of estimating the mass of exoplanets.

Before, scientists had to use the radial velocity (tiny wobbles in a star’s orbit) of the planet to find the planets mass.  This takes a long time and is really only good for very large planets or very close in planets.

Now scientists have a new technique for determining the mass of exoplanets by using their transit signal (the dips in light as a planet passes in front of its star and partially eclipses it).   Normally, transit data is used to determine the planet’s size and atmospheric properties, but the MIT team has found a way to interpret it such that it also reveals the planet’s mass.

So why is this important?  To determine if a planet is habitable requires knowing an exoplanet’s mass so scientists can figure out if the planet is made of gas or rock and, along with other date, if it is capable of supporting life (at least, life as we know it).  So this technique will be able to use existing data for a new purpose.

Well, that is a weight off my shoulders, now if I could only do something about my waist!

– Ex astris, scientia –

I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney in Pasadena, California and I am a Rising Star as rated by Super Lawyers Magazine.  As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +

Norman