On my voyage across the Internet I bumped into something that I had been thinking about for a long time. Name a star was high up on my list of things that I must do but never got round to because I just really didn’t want to get conned. Well, I took the leap and now I’m either one of those conned people or the happy owner of some big, hot ball of gas.
It all really started out as an interest in the Kepler Mission closely and its hunt for planets outside our solar system (these type of planets being called extrasolar planets). Kepler was launched in March 2009 on top of a Boeing 7925-10L (Delta-II) launch vehicle. This launch had to go well because, as with all launches there are no backup satellite or telescopes. Luckily the launch did go well and Kepler sits in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit with a period of 372.5 days. There is a slow drift rate away from Earth but after four years it should be no more than 0.4 AU away from the Earth.
kepler
To the relief of a lot of people it is now working fine and has proved itself by picking up already seen extrasolar planets. There are different methods of finding extra solar planets. Astronomy is a useful one and works out if the star moves from its position over time. If it does then it is assumed that it is in orbit around a planet that we cannot see directly. Obviously it’s going to be a very small orbit as the star is massive when compared to the planet and sometimes the centre of the orbit around the planet for the star is inside the star’s radius.
The radial velocity method measures slight changes in a star’s velocity as the star and the planet move about their common center of mass. Astronomers can detect these variances by analyzing the spectrum of starlight. In an effect known as Doppler shift, light waves from a star moving toward us are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. If the star is moving away, the light waves shift toward the red end of the spectrum.
kepler details
Gravitational lensing comes from one of the insights of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity bends space. We normally think of light as traveling in a straight line, but light rays become bent when passing through space that is warped by the presence of a massive object such as a star. This effect has been proven by observations of the Sun’s gravitational effect on starlight. When a planet happens to pass in front of a star along our line of sight, the planet’s gravity will behave like a lens. This focuses the light rays and causes a temporary sharp increase in brightness and change of the apparent position of the star.
Direct detection is a hard way of looking for planets as the planets themselves don’t give off light. This area is still in progress though.
The method Kepler uses though is the transit method. When a planet passes in front of a star it blocks out some light. It may be a very small amount of light but we have the instruments to pick up the change in brightness. On the Earth we could only pick up the larger planets like Jupiter by this method but, in space, out of our dirty atmosphere, earthlike planets will be picked up.hopefully. With the results that Kepler is sending back at the moment it is reckoned that even moons will be picked up around other planets.
Results are already coming in but to get confirmed results may take years as about three orbits need to be seen to make absolutely sure that the planet is orbiting around its star and is not a rock or something. Kepler is also looking at 100,000 stars and all that information has to be processed.
The first step in this journey was taken by finding the first planets. At the time of writing over 300 planets have been found and gave a very good reason for sending Kepler up to look for earthlike planets. The next step after this will probably be to try and get even more information from certain earthlike planets that have been found. Once we know where the earthlike planets are, it maybe a good idea to listen for signals and perhaps even send a signal. There is a small problem with this and that is that the stars that Kepler are looking at are 600 to 3000 light years away. That means that even if the star was one of the closer ones it would be 1200 years before we would get a response if we sent a message. Listening though is not such a bad idea as it is not inconceivable that messages could have been sent 600 years ago.
The progress so far is that Kepler has found a rocky planet. It is not like Earth but it is not a ball of gas which is a definite improvement over the planets we had seen before. It looks like we are getting close to an earthlike planet and I think it won’t be too long.
Extrasolar planet
So, anyway, I’d better defend myself on the star buying front. I suppose it was where I read about it that gave me the confidence to buy one. All it is really is just a donation to a non-profit organisation (Pale Blue Dot) that supports a project to find out the precise size of the planets found by Kepler. At $10 an adoption it undercuts all the cons out there and actually does something good with your money rather than make someone richer.
You are kept up-to-date on planet & other discoveries around your star and you get your name on Google sky when the star is clicked. (Although that is being set up at the moment) You also get a certificate that you can print off and put amongst all your other achievement awards. This is a great idea and with reviews in decent magazines over the Internet I think you are quite safe.
There is one point though and that is that you are actually adopting the star and not naming the star. The International astronomical union names stars.
When I picked the star I added it from the list but was pretty confused by the abbreviations. The following that I managed to get may help you-
R.A. = sky coordinate for longitude in hours, minutes, seconds
Dec. = sky coordinate for latitude in degrees, arcminutes, arcseconds
Mag. = astronomical brightness scale, lower numbers are brighter
Teff = estimated surface temperature in degrees Kelvin (Sun = 5777)
log g = estimated logarithm of surface gravity in cm/s^2 (Sun = 4.44)
[M/H] = estimated logarithm of heavy element abundance (Sun = 0.0)
The stars can also be sorted by their magnitude on the list and also by just e-mailing the organisers (all the information is on the pale blue dot website).
I think Kepler is one of the most exciting projects on at the moment and it is nice to be part of it, even if it is a very small part.
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Thank you, I do my best.