How to Find an Exoplanet
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It took Clyde Tombaugh half a yearof manually looking at photographicplates, contains over two million starsbefore he discovered Pluto.and its in our own solar system.So how on earth, does one find a planet orbiting a distant star?You could just look,but stars are so far away,and so bright compared to their planets,that its really hard to just look at one, and see a planet orbiting it.Direct discovery of new exoplanets byjust looking, is essentially limited torelatively nearby stars,with very large planets, very far away from them.Think 10 times the size of jupiter, and an orbit at least as big.The vast majority of exoplanets,have been found indirectly, by observing their effects on their parents stars.For example, a planet passing in front of a star will makethat s...
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It took Clyde Tombaugh half a yearof manually looking at photographicplates, contains over two million starsbefore he discovered Pluto.and its in our own solar system.So how on earth, does one find a planet orbiting a distant star?You could just look,but stars are so far away,and so bright compared to their planets,that its really hard to just look at one, and see a planet orbiting it.Direct discovery of new exoplanets byjust looking, is essentially limited torelatively nearby stars,with very large planets, very far away from them.Think 10 times the size of jupiter, and an orbit at least as big.The vast majority of exoplanets,have been found indirectly, by observing their effects on their parents stars.For example, a planet passing in front of a star will makethat s...
