Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a stunning graphical depiction of the results returned so far by the
Kepler spacecraft. Kepler is staring at a small section of the sky within which it keeps track of the brightness of some 100,000 stars, watching for the slight change in light output that can indicate a transiting planet. The amazing graphic shown above shows the number of stars for which transits have been detected, their correct relative sizes and colors, and the correct numbers and relative sizes of the detected planets (multiple planets for some stars). Our own sun is shown for scale at the far right, below the top row of larger stars. If you zoom in, you can see the silhouettes of Jupiter and our very tiny Earth on the sun's face. There is an incredible amount of information in this single image - it could be in the class of the famous
graphic depiction of Napolean's disastrous invasion of Russia.
4 comments:
On the verge of the exoplanet era in astronomy?
(when starlight nullers like Keck etc. get into stride, there should be some stunning results..)
This light curve method has the advantage of giving a maximum size and a guess at mass, over RV methods.
Incidentally, there is an Opensource sim,called Pioneer space sim, which generates solar systems (with different actual star types/planet configurations) where you can actually watch multiple transits in time accelerated modes (it can actually generate impossibly large actual sized planets which you can land on).
http://pioneerspacesim.net/
Astrology definitely one of favorite things! This article is so interesting but one thing I was wondering if the Kepler spacecraft still active 'cause I heard something about a discontinuation... and Soyuz spacecraft will be the unique spacecraft available to go to space.
It is awesome, there are so much things flying around in space, specially in our own solar system, it is a shame that what they discovered is only like 1% of what we are been told.
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