Cool and crazy science story

May 06, 2012 22:30

One of the things that still blows my mind about our studies of planets around other stars (beyond the simple fact that we can see them at all) is that astronomers are actually able to figure out the composition of their atmospheres. That's possible when a planet passes between us and its star: it creates a tiny shadow that dims the star's light ( Read more... )

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nasu_dengaku May 7 2012, 04:20:54 UTC
That was awesome, thanks for sharing.

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beth_leonard May 7 2012, 04:33:24 UTC
That is awesome! At One Hundred Fun Hundered this weekend, the kids spent quite a bit of time at a model showing this effect. They had a nice booth set up where the kids could click "capture data" on a computer, then turn a crank to move some planets around a light bulb and between the bulb and a photon detector, showing instant results on the computer.

--Beth
Edit: fix link quotes

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prock May 7 2012, 19:49:39 UTC
I take it the spectrographic instruments on SOHO aren't up to the task?

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steuard May 7 2012, 20:07:56 UTC
That's an interesting question. My first guess is that using a telescope like Hubble (and the instruments it has) would be a closer match to the sort of data that they'd get from actual extrasolar planet observations. If anything, I'd guess that SOHO's instruments might be too good: it's designed to study a star right up close, in ways that just aren't available when you're looking many light-years away.

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kirinn May 7 2012, 20:32:30 UTC
This is, as everyone else has said, totally awesome.

Did you get the almost-but-not-quite Peril Sensitive Sunglasses from Mudd for the event? I'm wondering how well they'll work. Hope the weather is decent enough to find out. Given the (PST) times listed for the event in the Mudd flier, it looks like the transit will start with the sun already getting low in the sky out here on the East coast...

(Also, woo, excellent use for my science/astronomy user icon!)

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steuard May 8 2012, 01:51:54 UTC
I do in fact have the Sunglasses of Omnipresent Lethal Peril from Mudd. (Kim and I each have a pair, in fact.) They block light awfully well: I've gotten a good look at the very dim looking filaments of a few (bright!) light bulbs, for instance.

We won't be able to see the whole transit from here (I hear that even the folks in Alaska are recommending that people go all the way to Hawaii instead), but several professors here are getting together to host a public viewing of the first hour or two. We've got a solar filter for our 8" telescope, and we're going to see if we can project it on a screen somehow (or if everyone will need to take turns at the eyepiece). This assumes that it's not overcast, of course.

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