Visitors Now:
Total Visits:
Total Stories:
Profile image
Story Views

Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

Amateur Astronomers Could Be NASA’s New Hope For Planet Hunting

Saturday, September 7, 2013 1:13
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

[ Watch the Video: Help NASA Hunt For Exoplanets ]

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

NASA‘s Open Source Differential Photometry Code for Amateur Astronomy Research (OSCAAR) program will allow amateur astronomers to find exoplanets.

The US space agency is calling out all amateur astronomers who are seeking to find world’s beyond our Solar System. People wanting to get involved who have a telescope will be able to pick up where Kepler left off after a malfunction left NASA abandoning the planet hunting space observatory earlier this year.

“From NASA’s Kepler mission, we know there are potentially thousands of exoplanets or more,” said Brett Morris, a research associate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who is lead developer of the OSCAAR program. “These planet candidates were discovered by looking at the brightness of thousands of stars over time.”

Planets transiting in front of their star block out a small fraction of light, so when it is viewed from Earth there is a dip in the light coming from the star.

“If we measure that star’s brightness over time, it will change by up to two or three percent, which can be measured by the commercial-grade detectors that many amateur astronomers and small observatories at academic institutions already have,” Morris said.

Kepler had a way better view because it did not have to deal with Earth’s atmosphere. Our planet’s atmospheric variability makes it tough to measure the brightness changes of a star. NASA’s latest program aims to adapt to the variabilities Earth has to offer, removing changes in the star’s brightness due to our planet’s atmosphere.

“Our program measures the brightness change of all the stars in the telescope’s field of view simultaneously, so you can pull out the change in brightness that you see from the planet-hosting star due to the transit event,” Morris said.

Amateur astronomers wanting to get involved in the program need a telescope equipped with an electronic light detector, known as a charge-coupled device (CCD) and software capable of reading the output from the CCD with a computer.

“We’re not saying the program will give groundbreaking results or science competitive with Kepler, unless you adapt OSCAAR for that purpose,” said Morris. “But the observations can be very satisfying knowing that you’re watching other planets, and we hope that OSCAAR users will be inspired to take their exoplanet studies further after they get a taste for photometry.”

He said people will be detecting mostly hot-Jupiter type exoplanets around nearby stars, which are large planets with a quick orbit around their star.

“People should be able to make measurements of maybe about a dozen bright planet-hosting stars even from urban areas with heavily light-polluted skies,” said Morris. “With the Kepler mission, exoplanets have become a hot topic in astronomy. More and more students are interested in doing their own observations of them, but there’s a shortage of mentors who have experience doing that because it’s a newer sub-field in astronomy.”

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and
reference information. For the latest science news, space news,
technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn
something new every day.\”



Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112940490/nasa-amateur-astronomers-hunt-down-exoplanets-090513/

Report abuse

Comments

Your Comments
Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

Top Stories
Recent Stories

Register

Newsletter

Email this story
Email this story

If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.