{"id":9644,"date":"2015-01-14T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=9644"},"modified":"2015-01-13T02:04:15","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T07:04:15","slug":"eso-new-telescope-array-in-chile-to-look-for-exoplanets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=9644","title":{"rendered":"ESO: New telescope array in Chile to look for exoplanets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest news item from\u00a0ESO<\/a>\u00a0(European Southern Observatory):<\/p>\n

New Exoplanet-hunting Telescopes on Paranal<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) has achieved first light at ESO\u2019s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. This project will search for transiting exoplanets \u2014 planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a slight dimming of the star\u2019s light that can be detected by sensitive instruments. The telescopes will focus on discovering Neptune-sized and smaller planets, with diameters between two and eight times that of Earth.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)<\/a> is located at ESO\u2019s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. This project will search for transiting exoplanets \u2014 planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a slight dimming of the star\u2019s light that can be detected by sensitive instruments. The telescopes will focus on discovering Neptune-sized and smaller planets, with diameters between two and eight times that of Earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most of the 20-centimetre telescopes that form the survey system are shown in this picture taken during testing. \u00a0Credit:\u00a0ESO\/R. West<\/em><\/p>\n

The Next-Generation Transit Survey<\/a> (NGTS) is a wide-field observing system made up of an array of twelve telescopes, each with an aperture of 20 centimetres [1]<\/a>. This new facility, built by a UK, Swiss and German consortium, is located at ESO\u2019s Paranal Observatory<\/a> in northern Chile and benefits from the superb observing conditions and excellent support facilities available at this site.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed a site where there were many clear nights and the air was clear and dry so that we could make very accurate measurements as often as possible \u2014 Paranal was the best choice by far,<\/em>\u201d says Don Pollacco of the University of Warwick in the UK and one of the NGTS project leads.<\/p>\n

NGTS is designed to operate in a robotic mode and it will continuously monitor the brightness of hundreds of thousands of comparatively bright stars in the southern skies. It is searching for transiting exoplanets and will reach a level of accuracy in measuring the brightness of stars \u2014 one part in a thousand \u2014 that has never before been attained with a ground-based wide-field survey instrument [2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.eso.org\/public\/archives\/videos\/medium_podcast\/eso1502a.m4v<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

This great accuracy of brightness measurement, across a wide field, is technically demanding, but all the key technologies needed for NGTS were demonstrated using a smaller prototype system, which operated on La Palma in the Canary Islands during 2009 and 2010. NGTS also builds on the success of the SuperWASP<\/a> experiment, which up to now leads in the detection of large gaseous planets.<\/p>\n

The discoveries of NGTS will be studied further using other larger telescopes, including the ESO Very Large Telescope<\/a>. One goal is to find small planets that are bright enough for the planetary mass to be measured. This will allow planetary densities to be deduced, which in turn provides clues about the composition of the planets. It may also be possible to probe the atmospheres of the exoplanets whilst they are in transit. During the transit some of the star\u2019s light passes through the planet\u2019s atmosphere, if it has one, and leaves a tiny, but detectable, signature. So far only a few such very delicate observations have been made, but NGTS should provide many more potential targets.<\/p>\n

This is the first telescope project hosted, but not operated, by ESO on Paranal. Several telescope projects operating under similar arrangements are already at work at the older La Silla Observatory. The NGTS data will flow into the ESO archive<\/a>system and will be available to astronomers worldwide for decades to come.<\/p>\n

Peter Wheatley, one of the NGTS project leads from the University of Warwick, concludes: \u201cWe are excited to begin our search for small planets around nearby stars. The NGTS discoveries, and follow-up observations by telescopes on the ground and in space, will be important steps in our quest to study the atmospheres and composition of small planets such as the Earth.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The NGTS Consortium is composed of the University of Warwick, UK; the Queen\u2019s University of Belfast, UK; the University of Leicester, UK; the University of Cambridge, UK; Geneva University, Switzerland and DLR Berlin, Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest news item from\u00a0ESO\u00a0(European Southern Observatory): New Exoplanet-hunting Telescopes on Paranal The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) has achieved first light at ESO\u2019s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. This project will search for transiting exoplanets \u2014 planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a slight dimming of the star\u2019s light … Continue reading ESO: New telescope array in Chile to look for exoplanets<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-exoplanets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34aWK-2vy","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15281,"url":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=15281","url_meta":{"origin":9644,"position":0},"title":"ESO: EXPRESSO next-gen planet hunter gets first light from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile","author":"TopSpacer","date":"December 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest report from\u00a0ESO: First Light for ESPRESSO \u2014 the Next Generation Planet Hunter The Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) has successfully made its first observations. 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