1. Tau Ceti, one of the closest stars to us (12 lightyears away) allegedly harbors five planets that weigh between two and six Earth masses and take between 14 and 640 days to orbit the star. One is reported to lie in the "habitable zone": five-Earth-mass planet with a period of 168 days. 2. Although you've probably heard about the flood of extrasolar planets found using ultra-high-res optical doppler and ultra-precise light-intensity measurement to detect planet-transits... the first extrasolar planets were found without needing optical telescopes at all before those techniques were mastered. For brownie points: What were they and how found?
Hello, (and merry Christmas to everyone), They used telescopes and they were looking for the wobbling of a star to see if there is an important mass around, this is why the first planets to be found were very big in size. Now, with more modern instruments, I am not sure what is the method. ... that first method was of course imprecise, the size of the planets prohibits any normal human life I would say. that first method is explained here : the radial velocity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar_planets nowadays, it became a bit more complex, Best regards, Simon Plouffe
participants (2)
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Simon Plouffe -
Warren Smith