Exoplanet Searches

There are countless worlds in our galaxy, all formed in the same process that created this planet you’re sitting/standing on and reading these words from. Pretty awesome thought. I’m a science fiction reader, so of course my thoughts always center on how many of those worlds might have life — in particular, the life we might be able to communicate or even visit (if that were even possible).  Finding those worlds isn’t just a matter of pointing a telescope up at stars and looking for little planets circling around them. Stars are bright and big; planets not so much. Most of the time, they’re hidden in the glare of their star — just as Earth would be lost in the Sun’s glare as seen from light-years away.

Most of the planets that HAVE been discovered around other stars are of the Jupiter-class and larger variety. They’re often called “Hot Jupiters” because their temps are so high — but not hot enough to be stars. They’re easier to spot that smaller, Earth-sized worlds. That’s changing now, due to missions like Kepler and COROT, which are designed to find the kinds of planets where life might be hanging out. And, they’re doing it in a variety of ways.

Planet searches are a hot topic right now in astronomy and space science — so much so that my latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe over at Astrocast.tv focuses on exoplanets and the methods astronomers are using to ferret them out from the glare of their stars.  You can watch it below — and by all means, head over to the main site and watch all the segments in this month’s episode!