CoRoT launched...at last

Thinker102 · Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:22 pm Post subject: CoRoT launched...at last

www.space.com/missionlaun...aunch.html

This satellite is the best shot at finding earth sized planets orbiting other stars - at least until the Kepler mission is launched in 2008 - if that happens.

To date, a good 200+ planets have been found orbiting others stars - some within a hundred lightyears or so, others being a long ways out (21,000 lightyears for one candidate). With a few dubious exceptions, all the extrasolar planets found so far have been gas giants, many of them substantially larger than Jupiter (though there are smaller ones as well).

I see CoRoT as a chance to work a bit further through the `Drake Equation'.

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:13 am Post subject: Re: CoRoT launched...at last

Very cool. And you're right about the Drake Equation. This will add to our knowledge of the percentage of stars that have planets orbiting them.

Thinker102 · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:34 am Post subject: Re: CoRoT launched...at last

Extrasolar Planets Enyclopedia:

vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/e...ncycl.html

This is probably the best public site on extrasolar planets on the web. I make it a point to check it a couple times a month.

Many of the extrasolar planets listed are `hot jupiters' with orbital periods measured in days or weeks. Quite a few others have highly eccentric orbits (often well in excess of 10%, with some in excess of 50%) - this is the difference between the planets closest approach to its sun and its greatest distance. By comparision, all of the worlds of our own solar system (save Pluto) have an eccentricity of less than 5% if I remember right. Strangely enough some stars have two or three of these highly eccentric worlds orbiting them. Only a few...no more than fifteen or twenty, I think, have orbital periods comparable to an earth year and eccentricity of less than 10%.

The goal is to find a `Jupiter' - a Jupiter sized world in a stable orbit at about the same distance from the target star as is our own Jupiter. I think they have two or three ... weak candidates for this. At one point, I came across a comment to the effect that if there were an observer in a solar system say fifty light years off using the same techniques of the same quality as our own planet hunters to scan our Solar system, he'd need a decade worth of perfect observations to detect Jupiter - and even then, he'd only be able to say `probably'.

Edited by: Thinker102 at: 12/28/06 3:53 am


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