PHYSICS 20A Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Exoplanet, Light Curve, Methods Of Detecting Exoplanets
Document Summary
Physics 20a lecture 18 exoplanets, comets, meteors, and more. Every planet exerts same gravitational pull on sun as sun does on them: i. e. jupiter has the strongest pull on the sun in our solar system it is equal to the pull of the sun on jupiter. Stellar occultations or transits: another method of discovering exoplanets: transit method. Dip in brightness of a star as a large object passes it in transit. A periodic partial eclipse of the star. The star"s light curve is a plot of the observed apparent brightness over time: kepler mission. Continuously monitoring the brightness of 140,000 stars. Measures a planet"s period, size, composition, etc. Over 2,000 candidate planets found so far potentially life-sustainable planets. 50 objects within the habitable zone around their stars. Kepler 22b in the kepler 22 system. Exoplanets have many eccentric orbits: elongated, ellipse-shaped. 30m telescope: more images of exoplanets, find spectra of their atmospheres. To determine their capabilities of sustaining life.
