Erin M. May, PhD
I started writing the first #SpaceTalkTuesday thread about planetary habitability, but quickly realized you all need some background on how we *find* planets first!
So sorry to everyone who voted for habitability, but we’re doing HOW TO FIND AN EXOPLANET 🔭 today!
I promise this will make the habitability thread next week make even more sense (1/)
Erin M. May, PhD
We can broadly classify the types of #exoplanets we've found like I've done on the graph below, compared to the Solar System planets
Most interestingly there are these classes of planets called Sub-Neptunes and Super-Earths which are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. These are the most common #exoplanet but we have nothing like them in our Solar System! (And these are what I'll talk about next week for the Habitability #SpaceTalkTuesday!)
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (17/)
Erin M. May, PhD
(You may have noticed that there are a couple other detection methods listed there, but I'm not going to talk about them here because they haven't found as many planets)
Erin M. May, PhD
But I'll leave you with this overview of the "Big 3" ways to find #exoplanets!
Next week we'll talk more about those funky Sub-Neptunes and Super-Earths and (exo)planetary habitability!
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday #ScienceThread #Science (18/18)
Erin M. May, PhD
Just like before, we generally already know the radius of the star because of reasons I won’t get into.
The amount of light the planet blocks out is proportional to the size of the planet compared to the size of the star.
So since we know the size of the star already, we can determine the size of the planet that is blocking out the light.
And we can figure out the length of time it takes for the planet to orbit based on how frequently we see the transit
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (13/)
Erin M. May, PhD
How does this work in real life?
We have telescopes that stare at stars in the sky waiting for the amount of light measured from them to change!
Currently TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is looking for planets all over the night sky by staring at one region of the sky and then moving slightly to look at another region
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (14/)
Erin M. May, PhD
Things can get complicated when there are multiple planets in the system that all have different sizes and orbital periods, and sometimes you can even have multiple planets transiting at once!
But telescopes like TESS (and the now decommissioned Kepler) are great because they can stare at a star long enough for us to figure out which signal is coming from which planet
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (15/)
Erin M. May, PhD
Transits have been the most successful method of finding exoplanets so far!
Once the Kepler Space telescope launched in 2009 the number of #exoplanets we had discovered absolutely skyrocketed
We've discovered that #exoplanets are very different than the types of planets in our Solar System!
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (16/)
Erin M. May, PhD
Now not all detection methods are equal, with RVs we learn about the *mass* of the planet because of how it tugs on the star. And we learn about the *orbit* because we can see just how long it takes for it to orbit the star
The orbit can tell us something about how hot the planet probably is but we can’t measure the radius of the planet or anything about the planet’s atmosphere with this method
For a while, this was the most popular and successful way to find planets!
#SpaceTalkTuesday (9/)
Erin M. May, PhD
However, in 1999 the first planet was found via the Transit method and the world has never been the same (I am definitely not biased! 🤗 )
I’ll be back later with more on Transits and why they are THE BEST
#SpaceTalkTuesday (10/)
Erin M. May, PhD
AH I got distracted by a book last night. I will add more to this about finding exoplanets via the transit method today! I guess #SpaceTalkTuesday is turning into #SpaceTalkWednesday 😂
Erin M. May, PhD
OKAY! It’s time for TRANSITS! I suppose this isn’t nearly as exciting as the picture of SgA* that was release today but oh well…
A transit happens when an #exoplanet passes between us and the star it orbits. Like I said earlier in the thread, planets are small, but that doesn’t stop them from blocking out a small amount of the star’s light when a transit happens ⭐
(Extended) #SpaceTalkTuesday (11/)
Erin M. May, PhD
So how much light does the planet block out?
Well let’s imagine for a second that the star is perfectly uniform and is emitting exactly the same amount of light from every region.
Let’s also imagine the planet is a solid sphere that passes in front of it and that light can't travel through it.
Larger planets will then block out more light than a smaller planet because they cover up more of this hypothetical uniformly bright star.
Extended #SpaceTalkTuesday (12/)
Erin M. May, PhD
Now we don’t always visually *see* the star moving, but what we do see is the impact of the star being pulled towards and away from us on the *color* of the star.
In the Universe, things that are moving away from us are “redshifted” and things that are moving towards us are “blueshifted”.
This is similar to the Doppler shift you hear in sound when a siren is moving towards/away from you. Things moving *towards* you are compressed, and for light this means it turns blue!
#SpaceTalkTuesday (6/)
Erin M. May, PhD
For planets and stars this happens on a very small scale
We don’t see the color change visually, but we do see the spectrum of the star shift *ever so slightly* back and forth during the orbit. This corresponds to a speed that the star is moving with
Because we often already know the mass of the star, we can use orbital dynamics to figure out how big an object would have to be to cause the star to move with that speed
If it’s small enough, behold you’ve found a planet!
#SpaceTalkTuesday (7/)
Erin M. May, PhD
(for some reason it wasn't letting me add the gif that went with that toot, so check it out here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Radial_velocity_doppler_spectroscopy.gif )
Erin M. May, PhD
The very first planet was found with this radial velocity method!
51 Pegasi b is a Hot Jupiter that was officially discovered in 1995. A few years ago, this discovery of the first planet outside our solar system won the Nobel prize!
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/
#SpaceTalkTuesday (8/)
Erin M. May, PhD
So, what’s an exoplanet? It’s just a planet that orbits a different star. Unfortunately, Planets are really small compared to stars and this makes them hard to find.
In our Solar System the smallest planet is Mercury which is only 0.3% the size of the Sun. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System and it's 10% the radius of the Sun.
Earth is 0.9% the radius of the Sun
#SpaceTalkTuesday (2/)
Erin M. May, PhD
Not only are planets small compared to stars, they’re also not as bright! Stars are fusing hydrogen into helium (and later more things that I won’t get into…) and the energy released from that is why they are so bright.
Planets are not fusing elements, so they’re not as bright. BUT they are warm, and warm things also emit light. Not at colors of light we can see with our eyes like stars do, but at longer wavelengths of light like the infrared (where #JWST will observe).
#SpaceTalkTuesday (3/)
Erin M. May, PhD
So, #exoplanets are small and dim. Meaning until recently we couldn’t just take out a telescope and stare at a star and hope to see a planet around it. The light from the star would just overwhelm everything!
Back when people started thinking about actually finding planets there were two main suggestions: (1) look at how the planet’s gravity pulls on the star and (2) watch for the planet to cross in front of the star and block out a little bit of light
#SpaceTalkTuesday (4/)
Erin M. May, PhD
We call the first method the Radial Velocity method.
You may think of an orbit as the planet orbiting the star, with the star stationary at the center. This is *almost* the truth, but even though planets are small compared to their stars they “tug” on the star ever so slightly causing it to move around.
This happens in our Solar System too! Jupiter is the biggest culprit - check out this gif (not to scale) of how Jupiter tugs on the Sun.
#SpaceTalkTuesday (5/)
tiflolinux.org - GNU Social is a social network, courtesy of tiflolinux.org. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.1-beta0, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All tiflolinux.org - GNU Social content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
