Network of Small Telescopes Find a Big Planet

"A network of amateur astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet located 500 light years away. This incredible discovery was made using a technique that measures the brightness of thousands of stars, watching for a periodic dimming. In this case, the Jupiter-sized planet, TrES-2, orbits its host star every 2.5 days, dimming it by 1.5%. Although the planet was discovered by a 10cm telescope, followup observations were made using the 10 metre W.M. Keck"

Full Story: here...yes here

Enjoy and happy crunching

Tiare Rivera.-

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My photography world

Network of Small Telescopes Find a Big Planet

"A network of amateur astronomers has discovered an extrasolar planet located 500 light years away. This incredible discovery was made using a technique that measures the brightness of thousands of stars, watching for a periodic dimming. In this case, the Jupiter-sized planet, TrES-2, orbits its host star every 2.5 days, dimming it by 1.5%. Although the planet was discovered by a 10cm telescope, followup observations were made using the 10 metre W.M. Keck"
Enjoy and happy crunching
Tiare Rivera.-

Interesting read. Thanks Tiare.
I read it all, yes all, and I was late for an appointment with my dentist because of it. :p

By the way, a planet bigger than Jupiter that completes an orbit around its star in 2.5 earth days?
Isn't that like, too fast? Must be awfully close to it. Much closer that Mercury is to our sun I guess.

Saludos.

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

For the moment our instruments are only able to detect planets that are big enough and close enough to their star to have a significant effect on its wobble or blot out a good portion of its light. That's why most extrasolar planets discovered so far are very large and in close orbits (which have to be fast to keep from falling into the star).

These objects are probably quite rare among all planets, but it hasn't stopped people from theorizing that Earth-like planets are the rare ones since we haven't seen any. It's really much too early to reach that conclusion until we have better instruments.

For everything else in the universe, bigger things are rare and smaller things are more plentiful. There are more pebbles than boulders, and more little M-type stars than all the more massive star types combined. I'm guessing there are vastly more Earth-sized planets in ordinary orbits than the oddballs we can detect today.

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If the planet were farther away from the star there is less of a chance that we would see the transit because of the more stringent alignment requirement. How accurate are present-day photometers, anyway? If an Earth-sized planet were to transit a Sun-sized star at one astronomical unit the alignment would have to be within +- 1/4 degree of edge-on, the transit would occur only about 1/650 of the time and the stellar dimmimg would be only about 1/12,000.

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I read an article a while back, regarding a search for Earth-type planets.

The method to be employed was similar to the one Tiare posted a link to. As a planet transits it's star, if the planet has an atmosphere, it would cause a tiny change in the star's observed spectrum, due to light passing through the atmosphere.

Clearly, some very sensitive instruments would be required!

Has anyone heard if this project ever got off the ground?

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