Posted on 09/09/2006 9:01:24 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
With this method, astronomers watch for small dips in a star's brightness produced when a planet passes in front of it and blocks some of its light. Because astronomers can track the planet's progress and measure how much light it blocks, they can determine its mass, size and orbit precisely. But this relies on the planet passing in front of its host star, as seen from Earth – an alignment that is surprisingly rare... [R]esearchers led by Francis O'Donovan at Caltech, US... discovered it using a network of amateur-sized telescopes called the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES)... The planet orbits a Sun-like star just 750 light years from Earth, in the constellation Draco... [I]t is slightly larger than Jupiter, with about 1.3 times the giant planet's mass and 1.2 times its radius... just 2.5 days in an orbit just one-tenth that of Mercury's around the Sun. The researchers also hope to learn about its chemical composition and temperature using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which can detect the planet's own infrared glow by studying slight changes in the brightness of the system as the planet passes behind its star... TrES-2 is also in the field of view of NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which is set to be launched in June 2008. Kepler should be able to detect slight variations in the timing of the planet's transits, which could reveal the presence of additional planets in the system, or perhaps even an Earth-sized moon around TrES-2, O'Donovan says. Kepler might also be able to detect starlight reflected from the planet itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientistspace.com ...
Probably. I am not up on which space telescope is named which. Eventually all space telescopes will be arrays like that. Except maybe ultraviolet and gamma range, which potentially have all the resolution available they can use in a single bore.
Early jazz trio. Neptune on baritone conch, Apollo on tenor conch, Mercury on keyboard (when not otherwise occupied).
Thank goodness it isn't the surface of . . . well . . . that other planet.
CCD images also have the advantage of obviating the need for blink comparator; the comparisons are done by computer, quickly; and the expense is far lower. Exposure time is also shorter, increasing the number of observations during the same time frame. And, of course the astronomers don't have to be freezing their tookus off up in the Andes or wherever the telescopes are best sited. :')
I love Bouguereau. A lot of people are unaware that he named that painting after a neighbor who sat for it as his model, Bertha V. Ness.
I should have noted this before:
"Computer simulation of a transit of TrES-2. Credit: Jeffrey Hall, Lowell Observatory"
things not fitting into evolutionary norms ping.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0609/19planet/
"For a guy who has been working on the Kepler Mission in one way or another for the last 15 years, it's exhilarating to be involved in the discovery of the first transiting planet in Kepler's field of view!" said Edward Dunham, Lowell Observatory instrument scientist and a founding co-investigator of the TrES network... Finding a planet in the Kepler field with the current method allows astronomers to plan future observations with Kepler that include searching for moons around TrES-2... By definition, a transiting planet passes directly between Earth and the star, causing a slight reduction in the light in a manner similar to that caused when the moon passes between the sun and Earth during a solar eclipse. According to Francis O'Donovan, an Irish graduate student in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, "When TrES-2 is in front of the star, it blocks off about one and a half percent of the star's light, an effect we can observe with our TrES telescopes," said O'Donovan, lead author of the paper announcing the discovery in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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