AST101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Terrestrial Planet Finder, Gemini Planet Imager, Super-Earth

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST101H1
• Professor: Michael Reid

Document Summary

Extrasolar planet= or exoplanet, a planet orbiting as star other than the sun. Exoplanets are hard to directly image. they are very small and very far away. 1: they are very dim compared to the par- It"s like trying to distinguish 2 adjacent tennis balls when you"re standing in. The first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s. 3 ways to detect exoplanets: radial velocity technique/doppler method. Planets and stars orbit their common centre of mass. Therefore, centre of the mass is close to the centre of the star. The motion of the star, sway or towards us (radial velocity) creates a doppler shift. Combination of the planet being blue/red shifted. This tells us the star"s orbital period. We can use the magnitude of the doppler shift to calculate the mass of the un- seen planet. Most of the planets found are hot jupiters". Most extrasolar planets orbit closer than the sun in contrast to how far jupiter is to our.