Category Archives: Exoplanets

Astronomy, Exoplanets, SETI

Video: NASA panel on the search for life on exoplanets

Here is a video of the panel discussion yesterday about the search for life on planets orbiting other stars (see earlier posting):

Caption:

NASA space-based observatories are making unprecedented new discoveries and revealing worlds never before seen. During a televised panel discussion of leading science and engineering experts at NASA Headquarters on Monday, July 14, a scientific and technological roadmap to lead to the discovery of potentially habitable worlds among the stars was addressed. The agency’s next step, the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb telescope), was featured as a new tool that will continue to help scientists rewrite scientific textbooks long after its scheduled launch in 2018.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, SETI

The search for the Fermi Paradox explanation

The Fermi paradox seems to be getting more attention these days:

Exoplanets

NASA panel: The search for habitable exoplanets – July 14

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This looks like an interesting discussion:

Leading Space Experts to Discuss the Search
for Life Beyond Earth

NASA Television will air a panel discussion of leading science and engineering experts on Monday, July 14, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. EDT, who will describe the scientific and technological roadmap that will lead to the discovery of potentially habitable worlds among the stars.

The public is invited to attend or view the event, which will take place in the Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW in Washington.

Space and ground observatories are cataloging and characterizing hundreds and what is expected to eventually be thousands of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy. NASA space-based observatories are making unprecedented new discoveries. The agency’s next step, the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb telescope), will continue to help scientists rewrite scientific textbooks after its scheduled launch in 2018.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will provide opening comments.

Panel participants include:

— Ellen Stofan, NASA’s chief scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington

— John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington

— John Mather, Nobel Laureate and Senior Project Scientist for the Webb telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

— Sara Seager, MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

— Dave Gallagher, director for Astronomy and Physics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

— Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Telescope Scientist for the Webb telescope

Questions can be asked during the event by attendees or via Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit: www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information about NASA’s role in the search for life, visit: www.nasa.gov

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Space participation

IAU decides exoplanet naming by the public is OK

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Uwingu was attacked by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) when it started a program to allow the public to select names for exoplanets :

And this year when Uwingu opened a program to name craters on Mars, the IAU attacked that as well.

Now, however, the IAU has created its own exoplanet naming program for the public:

The Popular Science article uses the word “official” a lot but assigning “official” to whatever the IAU management endorses is purely subjective. IAU is just one of many astronomy and science organizations. (I’d guess that only a minority of professional astronomers and space scientists belong to it.) It is neither a global nor intergalactic governmental organization. It’s main job is to organize conferences. Acceptance of the IAU’s space nomenclature system is voluntary. It’s clear that the IAU is merely fighting to protect and expand its turf and to maintain an aura of space officialdom. It wants to keep organizations like Uwingu from trespassing on its turf and dulling its aura.

Uwingu makes no claim that the names selected in its programs are “official” or will become broadly accepted names in the future.  Users are informed of the limited domain for the names they choose. The primary goal is to give people a sense of participation and connection to real places off of earth and in the process raise  some money for research.

The IAU’s exoplanet naming program will do little to limit Uwingu’s activities and I expect will instead encourage more organizations to get into the space place naming biz.

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Space participation

Planet Hunters citizen science paper reports on 14 new planet candidates

Another paper based on analysis done by citizen scientist contributors to the Planet Hunters program has been accepted by a scientific journal: Latest Science Paper Accepted for Publication: The First Kepler Seven Planet Candidate System and 13 Other Planet Candidates from the Kepler Archival Data – Planet Hunters

We at Planet Hunters are happy to announce the acceptance of the PHVI paper to the Astronomical Journal, in which 14 new planet candidates were discovered. All of these new planet candidates are located far from their host stars. In fact, seven of them lie in their host star’s habitable zone. Unfortunately, all of these planets are too large to be Earth-like.

Two of the new planet candidates are in multiple candidate systems. One of them, the new candidate orbiting KOI-351, is the seventh planet candidate orbiting its host star. Planet Hunters actually detected three new candidates around this star when KOI-351 was only known to have three candidates, showing how great the Planet Hunters can be in discovering multiple planet systems. The planets in KOI-351 also show strong gravitational interactions between the planets, which helps to confirm them as true planets. The gravity from some planets in the system causes other planets to transit before or after what we would otherwise expect, called transit timing variations. In fact, the second-to-last planet transited a full day after we expected it would. Others in the exoplanet field have been working for over a year to determine the masses of these planets.

The paper and contributors to the project: