Tag Archives: transit

The Solar System’s has Four New Neighbors

The number of worlds discovered around other stars is now counted in the thousands. But, if you were to go out on a dark night and try to spot those planet-hosting stars with your own eyes, you would struggle – only 6% of planets orbit stars bright enough for our eyes to pick out. This is especially true of transiting planets; those that pass in front of their star relative to our line of sight. Of more than 1000 such planets known, only one (55 Cancri) is bright enough to see in the night sky. That is, until today…

Position of HD219134 in Stellarium

HD 219134, nestled between Cassiopeia and Cephus, is remarkable in so many ways. It was first studied with HARPS-N, during it’s Rocky Planet Search. This instrument, a spectrograph on the TNG telescope in the Canary Islands, is able to measure the motion of stars so precisely that it can spot the to-and-fro wobble caused by planets.

Amazingly, this instrument found not just one but four planets around this star; a mini solar system just like our own. The outermost is a gas giant on a 3-year orbit, while the inner three are between the size of Earth and Neptune orbiting once every 3, 7 and 47 days.

And the prize for funkiest Colour scheme goes to...
And the prize for funkiest Colour scheme goes to…

ssc2015-02b_Inline[1]At this point, astronomers had no idea if these new worlds transited. But a planet on a 3-day orbit has pretty good odds to pass in front of its star so, taking control of the Spitzer space telescope, they pointed it and hoped. And sure enough, exactly when predicted, the innermost planet blocked out 0.036% of starlight. This fraction is just the surface area of the star covered up, giving a precise measure of the radius of the planet.

Now, with the mass of the planet measured by HARPS and the radius of the planet measured by Spitzer, it’s density can be found. While many similar sized worlds have turned out to be fluffy gas-balls rather than true super-Earths, a density of 5.89gcm-3 puts HD 219134b bang on Earth-like composition. If there was a surface, it’s gravity would be just under twice what we experience on Earth (18.8ms-3). With an orbit of only three days, though, the planet’s star-facing surface is likely to be hot enough to melt!

HD219134dens

At only 20 light years away, the newly-discovered solar system around HD219134 is also the closest transiting exoplanet ever found, and one of the 20 closest bright star systems to our Sun. With transiting planets extremely rare, there’s even a chance that this could actually be the closest transiting planet around a bright star (K & G-type).

HD219134’s brightness is also important for astronomers. The brighter & closer a planet, the more interesting ways we can study it. For example, this new world has jumped to the top of the list for those trying to study exoplanet atmospheres. We can also measure the path it takes as it crosses it’s star to determine just how the planet orbits. The outer 3 planets might peturb the orbits of the inner one, causing detectable variations in transit timing (TTVs).

It has truly been a remarkable week for exoplanet astronomy, beginning with the discovery of habitable-zone super-Earth Kepler-452b, and now the detection of the brightest, closest, awesomest transiting planet ever found. And, thanks to a huge array of exciting follow-up options, this will not be the last you’ve heard of HD219134b,

 

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Here’s how you can find the star in the sky (and a very neat animation of the transit):

 

The paper by Montelabi can be found on arXiv here

Other coverage includes:

Elizabeth Tasker’s piece on “The closest rocky planet ever has been found… so what?

Sci-News: HD 219134: Three Super-Earths Found Orbiting Star 21 Light-Years Away

Daily Mail: Star discovered with THREE Super-Earths, and one is the closest rocky planet ever found outside our solar system Read more: 

What can PLATO do for exoplanet astronomy?

As readers of my previous post will no doubt know; the future looks grim for exoplanetary science. Kepler is dead, Hubble will soon follow and we face a long wait before the next generation of planet-hunting instruments. But this week, exoplanet astronomers glimpsed another ray of hope. The next £500million of European Space Agency money looks likely to go to PLATO; an incredible exoplanet-hunting mission set to be even better than Kepler.

PlatoConcept

With an array of 34 telescopes mounted on a sun-shield, PLATO hopes to do things a little differently from both Kepler and TESS. Like those missions, it too will monitor thousands of stars looking for the minute dip in light caused by the passage of a planet in front of its parent star. However, it is in both breadth and depth that PLATO excels; with the combined light of dozens of cameras allowing 5% of the sky to be monitored to incredible accuracy at any one time.

Platofield
Plato’s likely field of view, with 2-3yr stops in red

More than a million stars could be scrutinised for Earth-sized planets by Plato, giving an expected planet haul an order of magnitude higher than Kepler. Plato will also not be tied down into staring at the same stars, instead monitoring 50% of the sky on eight 30-day positions and two longer 3-year fields. This will allow dozens of Earth-like planets with potentially habitable temperatures to be discovered.

The main criticism of the now-defunct Kepler mission was the faintness of these stars (between magnitude 7 and 17). This meant the vast majority of its planetary candidates were impossible to follow up and confirm. The wide field and large array of cameras on Plato allow the brightest stars to be monitored (mag 4-16). That will mean even tiny Earth-sized worlds found by Plato can be followed up and confirmed by ground-based telescopes.

Astroseismology
The concept of Astroseismology

This ability to survey bright stars also allows astronomers to perform extremely sensitive measurements of the stars themselves. By using variations in starlight caused by ripples on the star’s surface, astronomers can accurately pin down not only the size of the star but also the age of the star system. This means, not only can Plato find exoplanets around bright stars, but it can also determine the size and age of many of these planets to a precision only previously dreamed of.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), to launch in 2017, seems superficially to be a similar mission to Plato. It will potentially discover hundreds of planets before Plato even gets off the ground in 2024. However, the limited sensitivity of its cameras mean it is completely blind to Earth-like worlds around sun-like stars. Astroseismology is also off-limits for TESS, meaning the size of any worlds it does discover will be highly uncertain. Unlike Plato, it will also move between patches of sky every 30 days, allowing only hot, short-period planets to be found.

The-Earth-Moon-System
The only truly habitable planet yet known

With all other new telescopes, both in space and on the ground, limited to finding super-Earths around small stars, Plato is the only mission on the table truly capable of discovering an Earth-like world around a star like our Sun. And by targeting bright stars that allow atmospheric follow-up, it is not impossible to think that, as well as the first truly habitable planet, Plato could find the first inhabited one too.

However, the decision process for ESA’s Cosmic vision (M3 class) is still ongoing. It would be highly unusual for ESA member states to overturn the mission recommended by the science committee, but in the political cauldron that is ESA anything is possible. If Plato does get through unscathed, it will bring riches not just to the universities, countries and industries involved, but more significantly to the world of science as a whole.

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The paper detailing mission design and expected science results can be found at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0696 . The official ESA mission page has similar information at: http://sci.esa.int/plato/

PlatoCandidates
A comparison of Kepler Candidate planets (the majority of which are too faint for follow-up observations) against likely PLATO candidates (significantly brighter, eg with a lower magnitude)