Abstract
Discoveries of planets outside our solar system have burst from a trickle to a flood in recent years, transforming our understanding of the Universe. NASA's Kepler exoplanet-hunting spacecraft and other missions have shown that the Milky Way Galaxy is teeming with at least tens of billions of planets. These exoplanets come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from smaller than Earth to larger than Jupiter, and include a small number of Earth-size planets in the “habitable zones” of their stars. Telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope are carefully examining the atmospheric compositions of many of these alien worlds. However, the goals of imaging an Earth-size planet around another star and comprehensively understanding surface properties and atmospheric characteristics remain elusive. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will help move comparative planetology forward, while astronomers are continuing to design and develop the next generation of observatories. As scientists deeply involved in this research, we welcome your questions about the current state of knowledge about the diversity of exoplanetary systems, and the challenges of direct imaging and atmospheric characterization in particular. We’re especially interested in telescope concepts under development to directly image exoplanets and search for water, ozone, oxygen, and other potential markers of habitability, and envision where these may take our understanding of exoplanets in the next decade. Ask us anything! Debra Fischer, Professor of Astronomy at Yale University. Jessie Christiansen, Astronomer at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA. Aki Roberge, Research Astrophysicist & Study Scientist for the LUVOIR space telescope concept, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD Jennifer Wiseman, Hubble Space Telescope Senior Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Dr. Patricia Boyd Chief, Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory & Director Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Guest Investigator Program, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Highlights
Discoveries of planets outside our solar system have burst from a trickle to a flood in recent years, transforming our understanding of the Universe
Earth is unique in the Solar System in that it is the only planet teeming with surface life so abundant, it's changing the chemistry of the whole atmosphere
When searching for habitable zones, are you looking for zones where humans/life on earth could maybe prosper, or are you looking for zones where some kind or any kind of life form would prosper?
Summary
CITATION: AAAS-AMA , r/Science , Hi, we’re scientists who are scouring the night sky for exoplanets, and trying to determine if any might reside in the “habitable zones” of their stars. Here's a link to a more recent movie showing my favorite system: HR 8799, which has four super Jupiters orbiting far from their host star This is another kind of planet that we didn't know could exist!. There were four strong signals found by the citizen scientists using the project, and later a fifth signal was found Those five planets form a resonant chain: each planet takes 1.5 times as long as the planet interior to it to orbit its star! I loved this because while I was modeling the data to reveal all 3 planets, I was listening to an interview with a biologist on the radio who said "where ever we find water on Earth, we find life." At that moment, I thought that if stars could form planetary architectures with 3 giant planets packed inside of Mars's orbit here, that planet formation must be common.
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