Category Archives: extrasolar planets

exoplanets, exploration, extrasolar planets, Uwingu, Uwingu Fund

All Hail Albertus Alauda

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Uwingu Announces Contest Winner

for Popular Name of Alpha Centauri Bb

Back when I was a child my father took me out to see the stars and my mother encouraged me to read about as many things as I could. Without their guidance, I might not be as interested in astronomy and sharing the stars as I am today. When I look at some areas of the sky, such as the constellation Orion, I think of those early times when they were turning me on to the sky.  And, to me, some areas of the sky will always be associated with my folks. If I’d thought of it sooner, I might have nicknamed that region where the Orion Nebula reigns supreme after them:  caeli gloriosa domo Johannis Collins, et Maria (Latin for “the glorious sky home of John and Mary Collins”). It would be a fitting salute to two people who sacrificed a lot so I (and my siblings) could get ahead in life.

Interestingly, the winner of the Uwingu contest to suggest popular names for the planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B had a similar wish to honor a relative. The winning name, announced today by Uwingu, is Albertus Alauda, suggested by Jason Lark in honor of his late grandfather, Albert Lark. In the citation accompanying his nomination, Jason wrote, “His name in Latin means “noble” or “bright” and to praise or to extol. I think this is an apt description as my Grandfather was a noble man and bright of character and in this nomination, I wish to honour [extol] him.”

Jason’s nomination to salute his grandfather won out over more than 1,240 names that were suggested in Uwingu’s contest. While congratulations are due to Jason for his touching nomination, the real winners are also the people who took the time to enter the contest and learn more about exoplanets as they also shared their resources to help a worthy cause. The proceeds of the contest will go to fund space educators and their projects — a goal that Uwingu has long supported as it seeks to find new ways to fund STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) outreach in the United States. For more information on Uwingu and its ongoing mission, visit the group’s website here, and to learn more about its upcoming projects.

 

 

 

extrasolar planets, Kepler mission

Kepler’s Hits Just Keep Coming

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A Near-Earth-sized Planet in the Goldilocks Zone

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

The search for extra-solar planets that the Kepler mission is doing just keeps cranking out discoveries. The latest one is special: the first planet that is close to the size of Earth that orbits its star in the so-called “Goldilocks zone”. Essentially, that’s the region around almost any star where liquid water could exist on the surface of a planet that happens to be orbiting ‘in the zone’.

The planet is called Kepler-22b, and it is about 600 light-years away from us. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a Sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet’s host star belongs to the same class as our Sun—a G-type star which is actually slightly smaller and cooler.

Now, this discovery of a planet in the right place around its star is interesting because—as we all know—water is one of the three requirements necessary for life to exist: water, warmth, and organic material (food). So, finding a planet in the sweet spot is a big first step in locating life on other worlds.

It does NOT mean that Kepler has found life. It just means it has found a planet in the right place to support conditions that might allow life. That sounds hand-wavy, but this is the way discoveries work. You have to figure out if the environment is right for life, and then go about trying to understand that environment. Now, we have to study the planet further to see if water exists there.  It could be done by watching as the planet orbits between us and the star, and studying the star’s light as it passes through the planet’s atmosphere.  That is a technique called spectroscopy, and it means that astronomers detect the light, let it pass through a “super-prism” that breaks up the light into its component wavelengths, and then study the data to see if it indicates that water is present.  It would most likely be the presence of water vapor.  The amount you find, along with some other characteristics, tell you about the amount of water in the system.  So, Kepler’s discovery is  a big first step.

Kepler is an interesting observatory. It doesn’t take pictures.  It’s mainly interested in something called “light variation”.  That is, it discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars.  If a it sees a periodic dip in the light intensity coming from a star, then there’s a very good possibility that a planet is crossing in front of the star (from our point of view), or “transiting” it.  Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet. (And, by signal, we mean “a dip in the light intensity”.)

Once these candidate planets are announced, then a series of ground-based telescopes and the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope look at them and provide data that helps astronomers verify that these things are planets. It’s a long-term task and one that’s keeping astronomers busy. Kepler finds many candidate planets, and each one needs to be meticulously checked out.  Kepler has found 2,326 planet candidates. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter. Today’s announced discovery is one of only 48 stars (of the many thousands  that Kepler has studied) that have planets in their habitable zones. It is the first planet in a habitable zone that is near-Earth-sized, and that’s exciting. I hope it also means that there are many more of them out there, just waiting to be detected!  Stay tuned.