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To: Red Badger

I’m always amused by these detailed conjectures about planets outside our solar system.

Do you know how astronomers know they exist? The star exhibits a periodic “dimming” while the planet transits the face of it. That’s it.


8 posted on 04/18/2025 6:44:29 AM PDT by fwdude (Why is there a "far/radical right," but damned if they'll admit that there is a far/radical left?)
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To: fwdude
There may be records of these things at the Vatican, of all places...

The Coming and Going Planet

9 posted on 04/18/2025 6:49:33 AM PDT by C210N (Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.)
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To: fwdude

That’s only one method. It is also the one that has detected the most exoplanets because the Kepler telescope uses it. There is also the Doppler method which was mainly used before Kepler, and measures the star’s wobble due to the exoplanet’s gravitational tug on the star as it orbits. The latest method is to just observe them directly, which they’ve been doing more and more as technology allows.


13 posted on 04/18/2025 6:59:48 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder
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