4-inch Telescope Finds New Planet

serutan writes "After a backyard astronomy size telescope first tracked the periodic dimming of a star 500 light-years away, the Keck I telescope in Hawaii later confirmed that a Jupiter-size planet orbits the star. A press release from Harvard gives details. This is the first result of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, a project using small telescopes and cheap equipment to search for extrasolar planets. "

Comments

Proof that size doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been so proud and confident of my four inches. Thank you Slashdot.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Ignignot]

The telescope is four inches wide. I would be horrified to learn you are the same.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[farlcow]

An email in my inbox this morning guaranteed to increase your size by 4 inches. This could like, double, the number of planets we find! And free shipping to boot.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[temojen]

Make your own!

There should be lots of resources on the web on how to make your own telescope.

In Related News...

[grunt107]

2 inch telescope finds new neighbor...

Re:In Related News...

[Scaba]

But does this new neighbor have Jupiter-sized orbs?

Re:In Related News...

[kfg]

But does this new neighbor have Jupiter-sized orbs?

They're pulling me in. Can't. . . resist. . .the attraction.

KFG

Smaller Planets?

[Tango42]

Will this method help find smaller planets? Jovian sized are all well and good, but Terrestrial would be more interesting.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

Yes -- thats why there's plans for a space telescope in the next 10 or 20 years to look specifically for terrestrial planets.

also, jovian planets are good info too. One strong hypothesis is that life couldnt exist on earth without a big planet (jupiter) out there sweeping up most of the space junk (asteroids, comets, etc) that comes falling into the solar system. Big planets help out the inner planets by keeping collisions down.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Aardpig]

Will this method help find smaller planets?

Almost certainly not. The amplitude of the brightness variations, caused by the transit of a terrestrial planet, varies as the square of the ratio between the radius of the star and the planet. For the Sun/Earth values, this figure comes out as a 0.008% variation in brightness, or -- in astronomical terms -- a change of 0.2 millimagnitudes.

Measuring such small changes is extremely difficult, even using very large (5-10m) ground-based telescopes that have fancy optics and a high throughput. That's why terrestrial planet finding using the transit method will have to wait for NASA's Kepler mission. Scheduled for launch in 2007, this mission will look for minute brightness variations in c. 100,000 nearby Solar-type stars.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[techno-vampire]

Will this method help find smaller planets?

I doubt it. Terrestrial planets wouldn't block enough of a star's light to make a noticable difference. Consider that the Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and Sol about 865,000. That's roughly 108 times the diameter and the area (what's important here) is proportional to the square of the diameter making Sol's area on the order of 11664 times that of the Earth. Even with Jovian planets, the area covered is small, but apparently not too small.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[ImaLamer]

Big planets help out the inner planets by keeping collisions down.

Think of Jovian planets as switches, routers and other Layer-2 and above network hardware. They break up collision domains.

Ha...

(funny to me ok!)

Re:Smaller Planets?

[the_2nd_coming]

unfortunately, to date, all the Jupiter size planets have had insanely close or insanely eccentric orbits which would preclude any terrestrial planets from forming in a habitable zone.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[LiquidCoooled]

It is differences in scale like this that makes SETI practically impossible.

Even if we are belting out radio waves using every milliamp of power we possess, they are simply drowned out by the enormous radio source we orbit.

Thats why in the larger scheme of things, only something as large as a supernova could be used to contact other star systems, and even then, we could only ping them, then get 100% packet loss.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cyberchondriac]

Even if we are belting out radio waves using every milliamp of power we possess, they are simply drowned out by the enormous radio source we orbit.

Not really. From everything I've ever read, it's said that we emit as much radio activity as a small star.
That, along with the fact that our radio "noise" isn't random, should help us stand out rather well, I'd think.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[jkastner]

The Terrestrial Planet Finder is the next big mission to look for..umm..terrestrial planets.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Xilman]

Secondly, striping isn't Jupiter's style - it prefers spots, especially great red ones.

Have you ever actually looked at Jupiter with your own eyes, suitably assisted with a telescope? Even a 10cm telescope is sufficient to see plenty of detail.

I can assure you it is most certainly striped (or "zoned" and "belted" as the professionals call it). The spots are much harder to see. Only the GRS is invariably present and even that can be difficult to see at times when its colour fades.

Paul

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

You have some points but you're thinking a little too anecdotally. If something came at the earth from way outside the plane of the ecliptic, youre absolutely right that Jupiter couldnt do anything about it. It's a good thing that there's almost NOTHING way outside the plane of the ecliptic -- to come in at such an angle, it would most likely have been gravitationally deflected from something else. Most stuff to worry about comes in from the oort cloud, which is more amorphous than the kuiper belt or asteroid belt (hence the term cloud, not belt). Anything out of the belts will most likely be affected, or has been affected, by Jupiter at some point.

Now, as for something having to pass through Jupiter's orbit at just the right time, you're right -- its a big solar system. But the junk flying around doesnt fly very fast....and its not likely to hit anything. It's most likely to hit either the sun, or Jupiter, and thats the key. without the gas giants, all that junk is mostly likely to hit...earth.

Of course, stuff still does (ask the dinosaurs or the trilobytes) but at a low enough rate, and its small enough, that life can handle it.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[dmaxwell]

What about terrestrial sized moons in orbit about such a planet? A jovian size body at Mars distance from Sunlike star may well be able to host habitable bodies. I put the hypothetical jovian body at Mars distance because it will reflect a significant amount of energy onto it's moons. There also extra tidal heating to think of.

Neato

[ianbnet]

My only question is, how does a backyard telescope track the periodic dimming of a star? To my eyes, the things dim and brighten -- twinkle, if you will -- pretty much constantly.

Err, wait, never mind. Just read the Harvard press release and the "It took several Ph.D. scientists working full-time to develop the data analysis methods for this search program," bit.

Cool.

Re:Neato

[Uber Banker]

The Telescope did NOT find this planet. The Software did.

Re:Neato

[LiquidCoooled]

You can just see their long nights pouring over the data, trying to match it up.

prof1: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

prof2: Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.

prof1: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

Detected dimming?

[dolphin558]

I find it hard to believe that the dimming was detected with such a small resolution. I'd have to look into this. If it were possible to detect exoplanets with backyard telescopes then shouldn't have they been discovered 2 decades ago? We knew that dimming was indicative of an exoplanet back then.

Re:Detected dimming?

[techno-vampire]

Yes, with a good camera attached to the telescope, the dimming could have been detected decades ago, but nobody was looking. Even if they were, it would have been almost impossible to spot the difference. You'd have to use a blink comparator, like they did in finding Pluto, and trying to spot a small dimming and brightening is much harder than seeing that a spot's moved.

Re:Detected dimming?

[stratjakt]

As others have said, the telescope didn't find the planet, nor did it's owner. The software found the planet.

All stars "dim" or twinkle to a regular viewer, due to our atomsphere. If it were just atmospheric stuff, the dimming cycle should be pretty much random. But software can find a pattern in the "dimming" that a human couldnt. (The "cycle" would last months, if not years, would it not)

2 decades ago this software didn't exist.

Re:Detected dimming?

[ArbitraryConstant]

Resolution isn't wasn't necessary to make this technique work. Even the best telescopes have trouble detecting stars as more than point sources.

What matters is the quantity of light recieved per unit time. With the proper equipment on the end, even a small telescope can accurately measure very precisely the amount of light it recieves. I imagine the tricky part is eliminating other factors such as local environmental conditions.

Re:Detected dimming?

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I recently looked at some straonomy pictures and saw images of galaxies far far away where you could see individual stars. Surely these galaxies are so very far away that they would cover no more of the sky than a star that is only a few lightyears away would? So why can we get such good images of them but not of individual nearby stars or planets?"

Unfortunately this is not so.

The angular size of a star is much smaller than the angular size of (say) the Andromeda Galaxy, which probably makes up a majority of the non-Milky Way pictures of galaxies that most people see.

A star is usually tens to hundreds of thousands of km across. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part this is true. A galaxy is tens to hundreds of thousands of light years across. That's about 10000000000000 times larger. However, a galaxy like Andromeda is less than a 100000 times more distant than they stars we're talking about. Therefore, we can see significant internal detail.

That's great and all...

[cplusplus]

...but can they find my keys? I have a meeting in half an hour.

Re:That's great and all...

[StevenHenderson]

...but can they find my keys? I have a meeting in half an hour.

Good to see you are using that time wisely. :)

Not the telescope

[bhima]

The Telescope did NOT find this planet. The Software did.

Re:Not the telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a programmer aren't you?

Re:Not the telescope

[cephyn]

Well yeah, but Galileo found the moons of jupiter too, not his telescope. the telescope has no analytical properties, it takes an analyzer to do that (whether that be software or human brain wetware). The information analyzed by the software came from a "small" telescope, so you're nitpicking and being disingenuous. Everyone knows the telescope doesn't deserve congratulations, the people who designed the software do. I bet if you ask them how they found this planet, they'll say "well we started with a telescope of 4 inches, and THEN fed the information into a computer...." -- so technically, the telescope saw the planet first. ;)

Re:Not the telescope

[BarryNorton]

And, in fact, it's misleading to put it down to one telescope - yes one first saw it, but "the team at the CfA used a network of small telescopes" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/25/planet_fou nd/

Re:Not the telescope

[OneOver137]

C'mon can't you just give a skosh more credit to the CCD camera attached to that scope?

Or..

[essreenim]

You could read this link to a more intersting story I tried to submit that was rejected. (Flamebait modding unnecessary - just mentioning)
Here =======} *

Re:Or..

[mclearn]

So I wonder how long it will be before each story has a "other cool stories that got rejected" thread in it? It might be the story peer-moderation that Slashdot has been sorely lacking since the beginning. Moderators can use their mod points to inc/dec the score for interesting -- and certainly geek-newsworthy stories like this one.

Very close

[Tango42]

The newfound planet is a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting a star located about 500 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Lyra. This world circles its star every 3.03 days at a distance of only 4 million miles, much closer and faster than the planet Mercury in our solar system, giving it a temperature of around 1500 degrees F. That's very close... wouldn't the Hydrogen be captured by the star? A jupiter sized rocky planet sounds unlikely. Unless it's a very small star, I guess...

Re:Very close

[cephyn]

Anything that size is a gas giant. I mean i guess a rocky planet would be possible, but i somehow doubt it as well. It just seems that something bad would happen...it would probably have to be some sort of weird molten ball of magma....and it would be gathering all kinds of gas around it too due to its massive gravity, so I guess it would still be a gas giant. This is what i get for thinking as I type.

The hydrogen would only be captured by the star if the gravity of the planet was too weak to hold the hydrogen, or the gravity at the planet's "surface" or whatnot was weaker than the gravity exerted at that surface by the star. Which is rather unlikely...sure its real close to the star but its a real big planet too.

Re:Very close

[greypilgrim]

It's what astronomers call a Hot Jupiter. The Hydrogen would be gradually ripped from the planet, and this would actually give the planet a "tail" of sorts. Theoretically, once enough of the hydrogen was ripped off the planet will eventually be destroyed. It's unknown how they formed, but it is believed that many of the Jupiter type planets, which are quite common, are actually failed stars, sometimes called Brown Giants.

Re:Very close

[smooth wombat]

Aren't hot gases harder to keep hold of?

Eat a bowl of chili and let us know.

Name?

[TiggertheMad]

Oooh, they have to name the planet 'Rupert'. We really need a planet, somewhere, to be named 'Rupert'. Douglas would be so proud...

Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[blanks]

Ill be the first to admit I know nothing about astronomy, or telescopes, but would this be a better solution to the large expensive singular telescopes? Why not setup dozens of these telescopes in an area, hooked to computers, seems like it would be faster to have many charting the solar system then a single one. I know their are limitations on distances these can umm "see", but it seems like this would be a good solution for finding items in our solar system.....

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Actually this has been used for years at some of the larger observatories (ex VLT Array).

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[Shigeru]

The advantage to small telescopes is the ability to stare at a large section of the sky at once (in the case of the 10-cm telescopes used for this project, each exposure covers 6 degrees of sky). Compare this to the 10-meter Keck telescopes, whose imaging systems have fields of view of about an arcminute (1/60th of a degree). For transit searches, you want to keep staring at a star until you get lucky with a planet passing in front of the star, then confirm that as the transit happens again and again. So your best bet for optimizing your transit search is to look at a lot of stars at once, meaning a big field of view, which you get most easily from small telescopes.

It's not impossible to get large fields of view with large telescopes, but it takes a lot more effort. Check out the plans for building the 8.4 meter LSST for details.

Another planet announcement today...

[JohnnyDanger]

The European Southern Observatory also announced today that they had found a 14 Earth mass planet---the lightest yet discovered.

Although it is Uranus-sized, it is close to the star, and so it may not be similar.

ESO press release: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-2 2-04.html

Confusing Units

[Paulrothrock]

How big is "Jupiter Sized?" My mind cannot comprehend such things. Is there a conversion for VW Beetles or Libraries of Congress?

Re:Confusing Units

[Jonathunder]

Jupiter's mass is about 1.9 x 10 ^ 27 kg.

The classic 1974 VW Beetle had a mass of 870 kg.

So a Jupiter-sized planet is about 2183908045977011494252873 VW Beetles.

I was unable to find the mass of the LOC. Sorry.

Re:Kudos

[smooth wombat]

I personally don't consider anything under 12 inches to be worthwhile, but now I'll think twice about ruling-out the potential of such small telescopes.

Boy am I glad you ended that sentence with the word 'telescope'.

Amateur Astronomy

[FortKnox]

This really is a huge boost to amateur astronomy. All "size doesn't matter" jokes aside (gawd, that got old fast), an average amateur astronomer with a reasonably priced scope has a chance to find something new in space. That has to be exciting to anyone who looks up at the sky and wondered.

Who's gonna go get a scope now? I suggested Orion Scopes for price vs bells and whistles (if you are into the extra gadgetry and have the paycheck to not care about price, go Meade).

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[ergo98]

That has to be exciting to anyone who looks up at the sky and wondered.

I sincerely am not trying to be a jerk, and this isn't flamebait, but really: Who cares? There are millions, billions, or trillions of planets out there - and this means what exactly? We can't even reliably support missions to a little rock a stone throw away, much less set up a colony. Visiting the nearest star is, pardon the pun, astronomically more difficult.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in practical astronomy. Research such as ensuring that a big comet doesn't strike the Earth, or discovering asteroids full of lots of goodies that we might practically extract in our, or our children's, lifetime, or that we know so much about planets we might practically be able to visit in the next couple of centuries. However spending our resources on such unattainable information, especially given how quickly this information would be relegated obsolete once we start actually venturing out (imagine the information we'll attain overnight once we setup a large telescope on the moon), seems questionable.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[stratjakt]

This is actually a group of PhD's running some advanced data collection and aggregation software on a beowulf cluster of small telescopes.

This isnt, as the slashdot blurb suggests, some weekend warrior on his back porch who discovered a new planet.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[FortKnox]

granted, but most scopes make it easy to take multiple pics (most amateur astronomy pics on the web are multiple stacked pics). All you really need, then, is the software. I'm sure this research is good enough to either let the code out, or some bored astronomer coders will come up with something similar.

Some NASA dude

[A55M0NKEY]

I accompanied my Dad to the Stellafane the weekend before last where some NASA dude talked about how amateur astronomers with small telescopes 6-12 inches might collect useful data on planets partially eclipsing ( transiting ) stars by measuring and graphing the brightness of the star using a CCD.

I am not really into astronomy, but I wonder if one of those guys found it..

Once again

[AbbyNormal]

it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!

Re:Once again

[aiabx]

*sigh*. I don't know which astronomy joke fills me with more loathing... the telescope/penis size joke, or the "I can see the rings around Uranus" one.
-aiabx

4 inches - slightly misleading

[numist]

4 inch diameter, damn

I was thinking this might also be a story on nanotechnology... a 4" long telescope.

oh well, back to work.

So much for Big Science

[Baldrson]

The International Linear Collider is the antithesis of this sort of discovery. There are opportunities all over the place for small science to make big discoveries but small science is far less likely to do so if big science is sucking up all the equipment and man hours.

There needs to be a lot more prizes awarded to amateur scientists for discoveries and fewer big science projects.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Todd Fisher]

There needs to be a lot more prizes awarded to amateur scientists for discoveries and fewer big science projects. First one to cure cancer gets an iPod.

Re:So much for Big Science

[cephyn]

Yeah no kidding. I mean, imagine all the discoveries small science could make if they just had astronomers and telescopes!

Gimme a break. Why pit one type of science vs. another? Why not just say all science and all scientific discoveries are great and are great for all of science?

Re:So much for Big Science

[Shigeru]

It should be noted that while the initial discovery made with a 10 cm telescope set up relatively cheaply, the confirmation that it was in fact a planet came using the multi-million dollar Keck telescope. Transit detections have a notoriously bad record for turning out to be planets (a few percent are actually confirmed, the rest are some other effect), so you need follow-up with high resolution spectra. And for an 11th magnitude star, that requires a large telescope like Keck.

They could have gotten away with a 3-meter like at Lick Observatory, in this case, given the large radial velocity amplitude, but for further-out planets Keck is the only way to go. Trying to do this part of the science with more 10 cm telescopes would be out of the question.

Cosmic Thrill Seeker?

[ackthpt]

Will this method help find smaller planets? Jovian sized are all well and good, but Terrestrial would be more interesting.

All well and good? You gotta be kidding me! Someone with a hobby telescope spots something like this and it's like a hole-in-one in golf. Maybe you're looking for your next home, but at this stage even the people with the big radio scopes are excited by a planet find.

Maybe when we are able to warp space or whatever we'll get close enough to most of these stars to find something puny like an Earth size planet. For the meantime keep in mind the only way we know these things are there is from observation of the stars they orbit -- at this distance an Earth or Mars would be very hard to detect.

Last time....

[psyconaut]

....I put my telescope between two moons, the girlfriend got pregnant!

-psy

Hmmm

[HarveyBirdman]

The newfound planet is a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting a star located about 500 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Lyra. This world circles its star every 3.03 days at a distance of only 4 million miles, much closer and faster than the planet Mercury in our solar system.

Again?

Am I the only one beginning to feel a little skepticism about some of these claims? They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

Yeah, maybe this is new info that modifies the older theories, and maybe this is the way things are but something just seems wrong here. They keep finding this situation of Jupiter sized (or larger) worlds hugging their parent stars. Could there be some other mechanism at work?

One other idea is that this is simply the sitation we are able to detect with current methods (dimming and wobble), but, geez, there's so many of them like this. My Spidey-sense has begun to tingle.

Re:Hmmm

[east coast]

Either the earlier theories of planetary formation, based entirely on what we observed here in the Solar system, are wrong...

Or perhaps there is more than one method of planetary formation. Let's face facts, even most knowledgeable people on this subject are still pretty much novices. We haven't even seen one of these planets yet, it's all one big theory that will be modified over and over again. If the theory of the planet size and speed based on wobble, dimming, etc is correct in its current form than that has to be one of the best-conceived theories ever. It'd be pretty close to a caveman theorizing gravity including the mathmatics involved.

Re:Hmmm

[rleibman]

Also, remember that most of the planets that are being found are being found because they are easier to find (more eccentric orbits, larger planets, etc.), planetary formation for these systems might also be different than average (close encounters with other stars early in star formation, stars more unstable than others, etc.)

Re:Hmmm

[Idarubicin]

Am I the only one beginning to feel a little skepticism about some of these claims? They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

I think it's mostly down to the fact that these large planets close to their parent stars are easier to see.

If you're looking at a Jupiter-sized object that orbits closer than Mercury, then you're going to have an orbital period on the order of days or weeks. On the other hand, if you want to detect a Jupiter-sized object orbiting at that same distance Jupiter does from our Sun, then your orbital period ends up as years or tens of years (Jupiter completes one orbit in a bit less than twelve years.)

Depending on the technique you use to detect a planet, you often need to show a pattern that persists through at least two or three consecutive orbits.

In the case discussed here, very small changes in brightness (less than 1%) were observed every time there was a transit (the planet passed between us and the other star); these events took place every three days. In principle, one could get sufficient data in a week or so. If we were looking at an object with an orbit like Jupiter's, we'd need to have at least a quarter century of careful monitoring of the star. Other techniques also require significantly more data collection time or more sensitive equipment as the planets get smaller and their orbits grow longer. The reason why we're detecting massive gas giants in close orbits is because they're the easiest planets to see. We're definitely not getting a random sample of all planets.

Yes, the planets we are seeing seem unusual, but they're still quite few in absolute number. Perhaps in twenty years when we can reliably start detecting rocky, Earth-type planets in Earth-type orbits we'll be able to make more definitive statements. Right now we're like biologists trying to understand human life--but only being allowed to study specimens weighing more than 600 lbs.

Re:Hmmm

[pclminion]

They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

Just because it's orbiting there now doesn't mean it had to have formed there. There are some theories of our own Solar System which place Jupiter in a much closer orbit billions of years ago, but it slowly migrated outward through interactions with other solar system bodies.

Simple

[HarveyBirdman]

Jupiter sized = 1 Jupiter

I hope this helps. :-)

I am more intrigued by the speed...

[Zaphrod]

I am more intrigued by the speed of the planet. The Earth moves around the sun at about 66,000 miles per hour where this planet must move at almost 800,000 miles per hour.

Re:I am more intrigued by the speed...

[pclminion]

From the radius and period of the planet's orbit you can calculate the star's mass: M = 4*Pi^2*R^3/(G*T^2)

Where R is orbital radius, G is gravitational constant, T is orbital period.

Plugging into Google gives a mass for the star of 2.3*10^30 kilograms. Almost exactly equal to our sun's mass.

(Offtopic note -- I love Google calculator. It normalizes all units to SI automagically!)

A ground based telescope...

[Kaldaien]

Most interesting of all is that this new planet discovered optically was done by a ground based telescope. With the distortion from our atmosphere I'd have thought ground based optical exploration to be impractical. Most planets discovered outside of our solar system have been done with Spectroscopy and Interferometry. Hubble's had only limited success finding a planet optically. To find a planet with such a relatively inexpensive ground based optical telescope must be a major blow to NASA's ego ;)

Angry Mob Says. . .

[uberjoe]

"Now lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!"

Size/quality

[duckHole]

Even tho the size of these scopes is comparable to amateur equipment, the quality is quite a bit better:

These telescopes (STARE, located on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, PSST, located at Lowell Observatory, Arizona, and Sleuth, located at Mt. Palomar, California) are being described individually elsewhere (Dunham et al. 2004; Brown et al. 2004). Briefly, all 3 are small-aperture (10 cm), wide-field (6 degree), CCD-based systems with spatial resolution of about 11 seconds per pixel. from the technical report

Also note that the observations were made by all three scopes in sync, and the resulting photometrics were used to calculate the actual brightness variation. Lots of opportunities here for amateurs, but more than just point & shoot.

Re:4-inch-telescopre ain't much, but...

[meringuoid]

Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of those! All those new planets...

Perhaps you joke, but maybe it could be done.

There are a lot of small telescopes out there on computerised mounts. You just dial in an object and it will automatically go to and track that object.

Right, now manufacture a few hundred lightmeters with flash memory and USB connections. Advertise for amateur astronomers with GoTo telescopes to participate in this research programme. They go out each night and set their telescope to do the work. In the morning they detach the lightmeter and connect it to the PC to upload its data; the PC analyses it and sends its results home.

Then give a prize and a good deal of publicity to anyone whose home telescope discovers a new planet. Give them the naming privilege too. Hey, maybe it'll even encourage people to get telescopes who wouldn't ordinarily have been interested...

Question,

[chadjg]

Once this new software package is installed and the scope hooked up, how much effort do these searches take, and how smart do the searchers have to be?

I am SO guessing on this, but there can't be that many super smart astronomer types out there and it may be a waste to have them on less than awesome machines. Can a non-moron, non-specialist handle the datagathering and analysis with this package? I'm mostly just curious about this.

Kepler probe will watch 100,000 stars in 2007

[peter303]

This method of looking for planetary transits will be tried on 100,000 stars simultaneously by the Kepler space probe in 2007. Kepler points a 95 megapixel camera at the same patch of the sky for several years. They expect to discover about 900 planets, of which 50 may be Earth-size. Their assumptions about planetary size distribution and detectability are given on their website.

What would our Solar System look like?

[LnO313]

I always wonder when I read one of these articles about detecting planets, what would our Solar Sytem look like? Would these methods of analyzing dimming and wobble be able to detect more than just Jupiter? Most that I've read being discovered have periods of a few days not 100s of days. Are these methods getting better that eventually with enough data they can spot and discern a 'complicated' systems as ours?

You can buy scopes better than that!

[burris]

When it comes to 4-inch refractors, there are dozens of choices available to the amateur. High color correction probably isn't that critical for the transit surveys so the scopes used probably aren't as good as the high-end apochromats available to amateurs. Astro-Physics, Takahashi, Televue, and Thomas M. Back are just a few of the better ones.

This assumes that you consider $3,500 to be an "amateur" telescope. Serious amateur, yes. Note, to get serious about high quality imaging you need to spend at least as much on your mount. Then there are the Peltier-cooled CCD cameras...

burris

Adaptive Optics correct for Atmospheric distortion

[dbirchall]

Atmospheric distortion (exacerbated by humidity, wind shear, temperature differences, how much "airmass" you're looking through, etc.) has nasty effects on "seeing," yes.

But... remember Reagan's "Star Wars" space defense progam? One of the very few useful things we got for all that money was a technology called "adaptive optics." Basically, technology that takes the "twinkle" and the "wobble" out of stars.

Just about everything optical (and maybe even infrared) on Mauna Kea has some AO ability nowadays, using tertiary mirrors that can be adjusted ("tip-tilt") or deformed many times per second by computer-controlled actuators, and/or Orthogonal Transfer CCD's co-developed by University of Hawaii and MIT.

I work a few nights a month on Mauna Kea, and have seen an OTCCD instrument (OPTIC) in use on UH's 88-inch telescope (which also has a simple tip-tilt system available, I think), and it's pretty neat technology. I'm hoping the technology will lead to better image-stabilization technology for photography and videography... and I'd also like to see it "trickle down" to amateur telescopes. :)