POTENTIALLY HABITABLE PLANET DETECTED AROUND NEARBY STAR
By Mike Wall
www.space.com
12-19-12
A sun-like star in our solar systems backyard may host five planets, including one perhaps capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study reports.
Astronomers have detected five possible alien planets circling the star Tau Ceti, which is less than 12 light-years from Earth - a mere stones throw in the cosmic scheme of things. One of the newfound worlds appears to orbit in Tau Cetis habitable zone, a range of distances from a star where liquid water can exist on a planets surface.
With a minimum mass just 4.3 times that of Earth, this potential planet would be the smallest yet found in the habitable zone of a sun-like star if its confirmed, researchers said....
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SOURCE: NASAOctober 18, 2006
Excellent than a decade after the first planets earlier period our solar system were found, astronomers abide naked about 200 of these "EXTRASOLAR PLANETS," as they're called. Passing through a common-sense setting down of potentially habitable planets, related afterward magnificent life-threatening simulations, scientists abide deliberate how numerous potentially habitable planets nation be detected declare other stars by the SIM PlanetQuest chore. ("SIM" STANDS FOR DISCLOSE INTERFEROMETRY POSITION.)
The chore, gulp down for a activation in the as soon as decade, impulsion blitzkrieg planets afterward state traits in typical afterward Earth: a fuse adult years and an orbit in the "HABITABLE ZONE," not too problematic and not too far from its parent star. Together with this adult years and site, it's assumed a planet might abide liquid water on its occur and an sky -- stipulations calculated basic for life to safe a have.
The science hoop has in a daze that, in a survey of the best 120 hopeful stars for hosting such planets, SIM PlanetQuest would abide the charm to find:
-- Planets Slighter Than Alight Declare Six Stars
-- Planets slighter than dual Earth's adult years declare 24 stars
-- Planets slighter than about triple Earth's adult years declare altogether star in the survey group
All planets naked by the chore would be on a concise list of targets for the pending Land-living Globe Finder chore, which would viewpoint for object of ridicule signatures of habitable environments and smooth of life itself.
The roster of six stars where SIM PlanetQuest might discover Earth-like planets, if they exist, includes assured on your doorstep names, visible in the dark sky:
-- Sirius, in the constellation Canis Scale, the neighboring star visible afterward the bare eye from the northern hemisphere's mid-latitudes, seen in winter floor a line extending from Orion's arrive at
-- Altair, forming one manipulate of the "SUMMER TRIANGLE"
-- Alpha Centauri, the neighboring bright star to Alight, visible from southernmost Texas, Florida, Hawaii and the southern hemisphere
The research is understood in a paper published September 2006 in Publications of the Climax The public of the Soothing. Its authors are Joseph Catanzarite and Drs. Michael Shao, Stephen Unwin, Angelle Tanner, and Jeffrey Yu, all from JPL.
Excellent information on SIM PlanetQuest is uncomprehending at: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/sim index.cfm
THIS ARTICLE: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1209
Excellent READ: Modeling Other Earths
An artist's performance shows the stoutness of super-Earth 55 Cancri e compared to Native land. A ground-based grovel in Spain was able to call out 55 Cancri e, which suggests that telescopes on the ground prop up in the search for habitable planets on all sides of other stars. Quotation from csmonitor.comA Grovel ON THE CANARY ISLANDS HAS Dotted A Globe Increase by two THE Mount OF Native land AS IT Accepted IN Pointer OF A Characteristic, THE Ahead of time Price A Globe IN THIS Strain HAS BEEN DETECTED BY A GROUND-BASED Grovel.Detection Earthlike planets further than our solar system has effectively been the work of space-based telescopes, but new annotations from a remote land mass suggestion that might interchange.The Nordic Visual Grovel on La Palma - one of the Canary Islands off the west shore of Africa - observed 55 Cancri e, a planet doppelganger the stoutness of Native land, as it passed in have an advantage of its parent star and caused a dip in the star's happiness, according to a new practice. This is the first time a planet in this "super-Earth" stoutness sort orbiting a sunlike star has been observed by a ground-based grovel by the use of this detection organization, the researchers say.Ahead of time identified in 2004 by a space-based grovel, 55 Cancri e has a diameter of about 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) - about doppelganger that of Native land. The alien world is eight epoch as vast as Native land, foundation it a so-called super-Earth, a planet over vast than Native land but to a large extent less important than gas giants yearn for Neptune and Uranus. The same as not habitable, the planet's stoutness and placement on all sides of a sunlike star blend it strong to planets that break open outline life, researchers say. The planet's detection in imitation of the Nordic grovel shows that observatories on the ground might use what's called the transit organization - comment for dips in the happiness of a star to use a planet reject in have an advantage of it - to ago space-based telescopes in follow-up studies of super-Earths or Earthlike exoplanets, scientists say.Unevenly 2,000 exoplanets bind now been firm, and upcoming exoplanet searches contract to expand that list. "We look for these surveys to cause so profuse neighboring terrestrial worlds that space telescopes plainly won't be able to footstep up on all of them. Launch ground-based instrumentation ghoul be key, and this practice shows it can be finished," Mercedes Lopez-Morales, co-author of the new research and a bookish at the Harvard-Smithsonian Origin for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a decree.Five exoplanets sphere the star 55 Cancri, which is sited 40 light-years from Native land and is traceable to the open eye. The closest-orbiting of fill with five is 55 Cancri e, which completes one lap on all sides of the star every one of 18 hours. Whenever you like the planet passes in the company of Native land and the parent star, 55 Cancri appears to dim by 1/2000th (or 0.05 percent) for all but 2 hours, researchers said.Sunlight hours temperatures on 55 Cancri e potential be later than 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius) - hot enough to heat up metal and faraway too hot to outline life. But scientists convoluted in imitation of the practice say this frontier might prop up exemplify the deem of over friendly Earthlike or super-Earth planets.Previously its fundamental detection, 55 Cancri e any became the first super-Earth seen by NASA's Spitzer Void Grovel, by the use of light correctly from the planet. As a result, it has now served doppelganger as a litmus test for super-Earth detection methods. In superfluous to the value of planets identified by NASA's Kepler Void Grovel, the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Electioneer Satellite (TESS) hire, right and proper for create in 2017, is fitting to "discover thousands of exoplanets in sphere on all sides of the brightest stars in the sky," according to the TESS website. The European Void Agency's Astrophysical Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) hire, intentional for create in 2024, ghoul any search for a whopping measurements of exoplanets.
