Category Archives: Exoplanets

Exoplanets

A plot to visualize the diversity of exoplanets found so far

Here’s an interesting display of the nearly 1800 confirmed exoplanets on a plot of the distance from the Sun versus how much light energy the planet gets from its star (a value of 1.0 would equal the sun’s flux reaching earth): 4D-Exoplanets: A summary of known exoplanets in four dimensions. – Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo

hec_distance_chart[1]Large Image

The size of a circle is proportional to the size of the planet. The blue planets are cold and the red are hot while the green ones orbit within the habitable zone of their stars.

Exoplanets, SETI, Space Science

National Geographic looks at “The hunt for life beyond Earth”

The cover article of the July 2014 issue of National Geographic magazine is about looking for signs of extraterrestrial life :  Astrobiology – The hunt for life beyond Earth: One of the oldest questions may be answered in our lifetimes. Are we alone?

This includes searches both of sites within our solar system and of exoplanets.  Of course, there are great images and infographics like all Nat Geo articles.

Supplements include Distant Oasis about the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Goldilocks Worlds is about finding exoplanets of sizes similar to earth and in orbits within the  habitable zones of their stars.

Bill Nye of the Planetary Society discusses the issue of finding the resources to answer this old question:

Exoplanets, SETI

Less giggling over searching for ET

The search for signs of extraterrestrial life gets fewer giggles when mentioned today in mixed company. Kathleen Toerpe , deputy CEO for Programs and Special Projects at the Astrosociology Research Institute and editor of The Journal of Astrosociology,  writes about the growing acceptance of the search for extraterrestrial life as a serious and worthwhile pursuit : Putting the ‘Giggle Factor’ to Rest – Centauri Dreams.

Once exiled to the fringes of legitimate scientific inquiry by the Giggle Factor, the search for extraterrestrial life has gained new momentum, focus, and funding as the search broadens to encompass the search for microbial, in addition to intelligent, life. In the end, it may be the children who lead the way into a new future for SETI. In his opening statement, Committee Chair Smith reminded the high school students in attendance at the hearing that day that one of the hearing’s purposes is “to inspire students today to be the scientists of tomorrow.” And the noticeable lack of giggling in the room was magic to my ears.

Asteroids & Comets, Exoplanets, Space Systems

B612 update + Kepler back in action

Check out the latest newsletter from the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting earth from asteroid and comet impacts: Sentinel and Beyond: The B612 Foundation Newsletter! Vol. 12

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The Kepler telescope is looking for more exoplanets again:

Astronomy, Exoplanets

ESO Very Large Telescope installs SPHERES to study large exoplanets

An announcement from ESO (European Southern Observatory):

First Light for SPHERE Exoplanet Imager
Revolutionary new VLT instrument installed

SPHERE — the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument — has been installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and has achieved first light. This powerful new facility for finding and studying exoplanets uses multiple advanced techniques in combination. It offers dramatically better performance than existing instruments and has produced impressive views of dust discs around nearby stars and other targets during the very first days of observations. SPHERE was developed and built by a consortium of many European institutes, led by the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France, working in partnership with ESO. It is expected to revolutionise the detailed study of exoplanets and circumstellar discs.

eso1417a_500x500This infrared image shows the dust ring around the nearby star
HR 4796A in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It was oneof the first produced by the SPHERE instrument soon after it was
installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in May 2014. It shows
not only the ring itself with great clarity, but also reveals the
power of SPHERE to reduce the glare from the very bright star
— the key to finding and studying exoplanets in future

SPHERE passed its acceptance tests in Europe in December 2013 and was then shipped to Paranal. The delicate reassembly was completed in May 2014 and the instrument is now mounted on VLT Unit Telescope 3. SPHERE is the latest of the second generation of instruments for the VLT (the first three were X-shooter, KMOS and MUSE).

SPHERE combines several advanced techniques to give the highest contrast ever reached for direct planetary imaging — far beyond what could be achieved with NACO, which took the first ever direct image of an exoplanet. To reach its impressive performance SPHERE required early development of novel technologies, in particular in the area of adaptive optics, special detectors and coronagraph components.

“SPHERE is a very complex instrument. Thanks to the hard work of the many people who were involved in its design, construction and installation it has already exceeded our expectations. Wonderful!” says Jean-Luc Beuzit, of the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France and Principal Investigator of SPHERE.

SPHERE’s main goal is to find and characterise giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars by direct imaging [1]. This is an extremely challenging task as such planets are both very close to their parent stars in the sky and also very much fainter. In a normal image, even in the best conditions, the light from the star totally swamps the weak glow from the planet. The whole design of SPHERE is therefore focused on reaching the highest contrast possible in a tiny patch of sky around the dazzling star.

The first of three novel techniques exploited by SPHERE is extreme adaptive optics to correct for the effects of the Earth’s atmosphere so that images are sharper and the contrast of the exoplanet increased. Secondly, a coronagraph is used to block out the light from the star and increase the contrast still further. Finally, a technique called differential imaging is applied that exploits differences between planetary and stellar light in terms of its colour or polarisation — and these subtle differences can also be exploited to reveal a currently invisible exoplanet (ann13069, eso0503) [2].

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These sequences show the SPHERE exoplanet imaging instrument
during installation on the VLT. The second section shows an
engineer working on the complex optics and electronics of the
SPHERE instrument, shortly before it was installed and
achieved successful first light in May 2014.

SPHERE was designed and built by the following institutes: Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble; Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg; Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille; Laboratoire d’Etudes Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique de l’Observatoire de Paris; Laboratoire Lagrange in Nice; ONERA; Observatoire de Genève; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics coordinated by the Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova; Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zurich; Astronomical Institute of the University of Amsterdam; Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA-ASTRON) and ESO.

During the first light observations several test targets were observed using the many different modes of SPHERE. These include one of the best images so far of the ring of dust around the nearby star HR 4796A. It not only shows the ring with exceptional clarity but also illustrates how well SPHERE can suppress the glare of the bright star at the centre of the picture.

Following further extensive tests and science verification observations SPHERE will be made available to the astronomical community later in 2014.

“This is just the beginning. SPHERE is a uniquely powerful tool and will doubtless reveal many exciting surprises in the years to come,” concludes Jean-Luc Beuzit.