NASA Discover Eighth Planet Circling Distant Star

Our solar system is no longer top dog in the Milky Way.  NASA, using Artificial Intelligence in which computers "learned" how to identify planets, discovered Kepler-90i, a rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days and has a surface temperature about 800° C.  That brings Kepler-90's system up to eight planets, the same as ours.  But all of Kepler-90's planets have orbits closer than Earth's is to our sun. 

Software engineers came up with a way to "train" the neural network to identify transiting exoplanets using previously proven signals and then tested it.  The neural network correctly identified true planets and false positives 96% of the time.  The computers can now sort through the massive amount of data that humans can't do easily or as quickly. 

The data that led to this discovery was collected from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.  Kepler-90 is a Sun-like star about 2545 light-years away from Earth in the Draco constellation.

We are (probably) not alone! First exoplanet discovered 1995

 

Artist's depiction of exoplanet 51 Pegasi b

October 6, 1995, European scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced the discovery of a planet orbiting another star.  Planet 51 Pegasi b is about half the size of Jupiter and a "year" is just four Earth days.  And it orbits its sun 51 Pegasi at a distance of 0.05 AU (astronomical units) which is about 1/6 the distance between Mercury and our sun.  That means the surface temperature is around a sultry 2-3000 Kelvin.

In the 21 years since, over 1800 exoplanets have been discovered, including (perhaps) Tatooine, Vulcan and Krypton.

How to find Star 51 Pegasi

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/51peg.html

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4674

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2015-312

First Vulcan, then Tatooine, and now Krypton has been found?

An artist's rendering of what the surface of Proxima b might resemble.

Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf in the constellation Centaurus, is the closest star to us (except for our sun).  It lies a little over four light-years from here and astronomers using the European Southern Observatory telescopes have announced evidence of a planet orbiting the red dwarf.  What is most exciting about this is the planet is in the 'sweet zone', the optimum distance from a star where liquid water (and therefore, life) can exist on the surface.

It is the closest exo-planet to Earth that could sustain life.  The Pale Red Dot team took its name from an image from Voyager 1, taken in 1990.  It took a picture of Earth and was called the Pale Blue Dot.  Since Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star...you see where this is going.

Okay, so it isn't Krypton.  Everybody knows that Krypton exploded years and years ago and even before that, it was about fifty light-years from Earth.  But it still exciting to find a planet so (relatively) close to us.  It presents the perfect stepping stone as the first planet to explore as we venture into deep space.


Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri: Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016.

First Tattooine, now Vulcan

NASA announced earlier it might have located Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tattooine.  For the past nine years, NASA has embarked on a planet finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest to find Mr. Spock’s home Vulcan.  Astronomers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory are searching for a planet orbiting 40 Eridani, a triple-star system about 16 light-years from Earth.  ‘Vulcan’ is thought to orbit the red-orange K dwarf star Eridani A.

K-stars are orangey stars, slightly cooler than our sun.  They are hotter, brighter and bluer than M stars, but cooler, dimmer and redder than O, B, A F and G stars.  Did you get all that?

The stars in the Eridani system are hundreds of astronomical units apart, so a planet where life could Live Long and Prosper, would have to be in the sweet spot, the habitable zone about 0.6 astronomical units from Eridani A.  An astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth.

As we know from Star Trek lore, Vulcan is a Minshara class planet, located about 16 light-years from Earth, orbiting 40 Eridani, endorsed by Gene Roddenberry as Vulcan’s sun in a letter published July 1991 in Sky & Telescope magazine.  Its surface is hotter than Earth.  Its gravity is stronger and its atmosphere thinner.

In the original Star Trek series, Spock mentions Vulcan has no moon, which comes as no surprise to Uhura. 

Let’s hope we can find it before the Romulan Nero destroys it.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/newworlds/Vulcan_Planet.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification

http://www.solstation.com/stars3/100-ks.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(Star_Trek)

NASA Might Be Close to Finding Tatooine

NASA announced earlier this week they have discovered a gas giant about the size of Jupiter, orbiting a two-star system, roughly 3700 light years away.

We all remember in the beginning of Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope Luke Skywalker looking hot (and that has nothing to do with him being on a desert planet), watching the two suns set on the horizon while John Williams’ music the Force Theme swells in the background.

Now you’re saying, “Hey!  Tatooine isn’t a gas giant.  It’s just a rock in space!”

True, but planet Kepler-1647b is in the “habitable zone” a range of distances from a star where liquid H2O could exist on the surface of a planet.  Although Kepler-1647b is a gas giant, there is the possibility it has moons large enough to sustain life.

Kepler-1647b is not the only planet found to be orbiting two suns but it is the largest.  It takes 1107 days to complete a single orbit which is the longest of any exo-planet discovered so far, which is why it took so long to confirm it.  Its transit across its suns was noted back in 2011 from data acquired by the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009.  The telescope discovers planets when they cross in front of their host sun, causing a dip in the sun’s brightness.

The Kepler Space Telescope’s initial observations ended in May 2013, when two of the four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed, but scientists still have mountains of data to sort through.  In 2014, mission members found a way to stabilize Kepler using “sunlight pressure”.  So Kepler is back in business and has discovered over 2200 alien planets to date.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/new-planet-is-largest-discovered-that-orbits-two-suns

http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/jupiter-size-alien-world-is-biggest-tatooine-planet-with-2-suns-ever-found/ar-AAh09bQ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP#image=3

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/overview/index.html