Telescope

Since the discovery of the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found. These widespread planetary systems confirm that our solar system is just one of many in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery of such systems provided intriguing insights, challenging our perspectives about how planetary systems form and evolve. But how do astronomers search for these exoplanets and what can we find out about them? Join Dr. Rickman as she describes the scientific hunt for these distant worlds.

The lecture starts at about 13:30 minutes in after all the news updates.

Host: Frank Summers, Space Telescope Science Institute Recorded live on Tuesday, June 1, 2021 More information: www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

Very interesting lecture, some of this has been talked about before however it is always good to listen to different explanations of the same topics. The upcoming JWST is hopefully going to open up a lot more discoveries.

The lecture makes reference to the discovery of the moons around Jupiter with the first telescope. Which really puts in to context how quickly things have moved on. First exoplanet was found in 1992, but only recently has the number found increased.

Links at the end to the zooniverse project, two of these projects are to do with searching for exo-planets so this gives citizens a chance to take part (and get cited) in real research.

#Space,#Science,#Telescope,#TheHuntForDistanceWorlds,#STSCI,#stsci

June 24, 2021

Earth-like biospheres on other planets may be rare

This is an interesting article on Science Daily. Seems that the conditions on Earth could be far rarer than we think. [1] So we are looking for Earth Like atmospheres, the JWST will really help push this research forward.

Please feel free to discuss further on discourse [2]l. I have also included a link to a infographc, on atmosphere composition in our own solar system [3]

Comment and questions on this.

I just wondered what the range of conditions could support life, for example is there a minimum and corresponding percentage range for Oxygen for example. The same would go for other gasses for example Nitrogen, $CO_2$ etc. Hopefully we can learn more about what is needed for life, so we perhaps increase our chances of finding possible habitable words. This, of course is assuming all life requires Oxygen We have found life in or near volcanoes on Earth, conditions are very hot, and inhospitable to humans generally, not to mention the Sulfur Dioxide and other toxic gasses.

I will try and look in to this further.

REFERENCES

1 Main Article 2 Discourse Discussion 3 Compound Chemistry – Solar System Atmospheres

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,ScienceDaily,#Planets,#Atosphere, #Telescope,#JWST,#Exoplanets,#Life,#Composition

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March 2, 2021

The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres

Write up : 7th March 2021

This is a really interesting talk and overview of what the HST has undertaken since launch in 1990.

Some highlights

Gravitational lensing, found galaxies magnified 50x and detection of galaxies 10x fainter.
Precision cosmology & Hubble Constant calculations via several methods
Exoplanet Atmospheres
Exoplanets e.g 57 Pegasi
Exoplanets found from transiting host star
Planetary Atmospheres plus detection of organic molecules
Earth size Exoplanets (Trappist 1b and 1c)

The talk also makes reference to academic papers, which can be easily searched for, so for example

With the last point in the list above, this paper was De Wit, et al 2016 Nature 537,69 – if you search for this you find arxiv 1006.01103 which is publication in the above journal 2016Natur 537

The 537 refers to the volume, and 69 is the first page of the article, in this case the article is on pages 69 to 72.

So using the references from the talk you can do further reading.

Well worth watching

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres Tue 2nd March 2021

Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online, #talk,#science

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

February 4, 2021

February STSCI lecture review

This months lecture Milky Way vs Andromeda: When galaxies collide. was really interesting, and covered material about how galaxies are formed, looking for life and what may happen when in 7 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own, home galaxy.

The lecture also talked about how galaxies were first discovered and how, only in the last 100 years have we really started to learn a lot more about them. Why the two will merge is linked to the expansion of the universe.

Earth, of course, won't exist by then. The sun, being 4 billion years old, will have expanded to a red giant. As the duration of a 'main sequence star' is about 10 billion years (cite OU Open Learn The Sun)

So the lecture also included about how we could find earth 2.0, the fact that this. may not be easy given the time it will take to reach even the nearest start.

Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) and the planet around that isn't very hospitable.

Personal comment to add to this

I would guess it also raises the question if it will take 10's of 1000s of years to reach will it be the same or have developed to be more life friendly, then on the other side of that a planet that is life friendly now, may like the Earth not be so friendly i 1000's of years time.

Looking forward to the next lecture in March.

REFERENCES

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,#galaxies,#space,#Telescope,#stsci,#Science,Physics,#Astronomy