Exoplanet Research Paper

In the past 15 years, astronomers have achieved leaps and bounds in terms of spotting exoplanets. It had gone from producing no results to being possible. One method, known as Transit, involves continually observing stars and noting whenever spots of it become dimmer. By calculating how much of the star’s light was dimmed, astronomers can also indicate the approximate size of the planet’s radius. It can also tell astronomers what the atmosphere of an exoplanet consists of by looking at the light from the star passing through the planet from differing wavelengths. From here, one can accurately determine the gasses in the atmosphere. (The Planetary Society). Problems with the Transit method stem from the fact that it’s guidelines are very difficult …show more content…
Other issues include the fact that astronomers would need to observe a potential-planet’s transit multiple times to get concrete data, which means waiting months or years for another transit. It can also create false positives, which is when a binary star gets confused for a planet. This being due to the fact that Earth’s position can greatly muddle up how much of the observing star’s light is being dimmed from a planet or binary star (The Planetary Society). Currently, the most common and effective way to find exoplanets is Radial Velocity. This method involves taking advantage of the slight ellipse-shaped movement stars make due to the gravitational tug of the planets orbiting it. When the stars make this movement, their normal light spectrum is affected, shifting blue if it’s moving towards whomever is observing it, and red if it’s shifting away. With the advent of extremely sensitive spectrographs, astronomers on Earth are using this knowledge to identity exoplanets. They search for a very specific pattern of color shifts; red, blue, red, blue, and repeating. After a period of time, if the observers find this pattern is consistent, then what they have just found is a celestial body that could very well be an