I ’ve get down one perdition of a lenient spot for exoplanet research , especially unexampled and interesting ways to discover planets . And this latest one , well , it just might change everything . Here ’s why .
In a paper published onarXivand accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics , researchers lead by Helen Giles from the University of Geneva bump a planet 1,800 light - years from Earth called ( bass breath ) EPIC248847494b . The satellite itself is very interesting , and we ’ll come to that later , but it ’s how they detect it that is exceedingly exciting .
We have a number of ways to find planets , such as search for the wobble in a star due to the gravitational tower of a satellite , known as the radial velocity method . The most common way , however , is thetransit method . This involves watching for the dip in a star ’s light as a planet exceed in front .
This is by far the most successful method acting , turn up thousands of planets , mostly byNASA ’s Kepler scope . One problem , however , is that you need to see three transportation of a planet to confirm it exists and to rule out other possibilities like the signal being a fault with the scope .
For planets on a short eye socket , from days to weeks , this is relatively easy . For major planet on a longer orbit , however , such as those on an land - same cranial orbit of one class , this is peculiarly tricksy , because you need to keep the star for a long time . Consequently , we ’ve found more poor eye socket planet than farsighted ones .
brusk orbit satellite are generally too close to their maven , and thus too spicy , to host living – except for those that orbit cooler gnome stars , although theirerrant flare-up of radiationmight be a problem . Planets in inhabitable zona around more Sun - alike wizard , where temperature are just correct for water to exist , tend to be on longer domain .
That ’s why this latest paper is so exciting . The researchers were able to affirm that a planet on a long orbit exist from just a single theodolite , dub a monotransit planet . They did this by first spotting the single transportation in data from thesecond runof the Kepler telescope – K2 – before using the radiate velocity method to espouse up and line up the planet .
“ Typically to just ‘ find ’ a transiting exoplanet , at least three transits are needed and most automate transit determination software package has this built in , ” Giles narrate IFLScience . “ But my technique for find this transportation was to wait through G of light-headed curve by oculus . ”
And this could have huge implications for notice more planets in the future , include unity that are like Earth .
A fistful of other monotransit satellite candidates have been found so far . Most , however , are on unforesightful orbits . EPIC248847494b is unique in that it takes 10 year to orb its star , make it the long period monotransit planet ever found . Using the traditional passage method acting , it would have taken us at least 30 years to confirm its creation .
Giles and her team , however , perform follow - up stellate velocity measurements with theSwiss Euler telescopein Chile , plugging in information on the virtuoso from ESA’sGaia charge . By look through data from Kepler manually , they were able to blob the candidate planet and then study it .
They found that the satellite is potential a flatulency colossus about 1.1 times the sizing of Jupiter , orbiting about 4.5 AU ( astronomical units , 1 AU is the Earth - Sun distance ) from its star , a submarine - giant . This places it right in the expected habitable zone of that star .
Its transit is also improbably long , hold up a whopping 54 hour . Earth ’s theodolite see from afar would only last about 13 hours . So you would need to observe the planet for a long time in the first stead to even see the transit .
“ The transit method acting has always fight to find long menstruum satellite , so that is one understanding why this is an exciting discovery , ” said Giles . “ This open a raw windowpane for satellite hunting . ”
This could prove incredibly important for theTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite(TESS ) , launch in April 2018 . Using the transit method and honour about 85 percent of the sky , TESS is require to observe more than 20,000 planets .
It ’ll only be looking at each region of the sky for 27 day , however , meaning it ’ll only see three transits for planet on short orbit of less than a week . For other planets on longer arena , such as ones like Earth , techniques like that employed by Giles will be absolutely essential .
“ Theoretically – yes ! ” Giles said , when asked if her proficiency could help us discover more Earth - comparable planets . “ In the case of another Earth , we can start chasing it after a single passage . ”
Speaking to IFLScience , Dr John Mather , elderly undertaking scientist for NASA ’s James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) who was not involved in the paper , hold that the technique used to find the planet was an exciting one for next exoplanet astronomy . “ As they say , we will have many ' monotransits ' to think about and will have to develop methods to make do with them , ” he said .
“ solid ground - like satellite will also be candidate from monotransit observations . If any of them seem very interesting , we will certainly want to detect a elbow room to confirm them by other means , and that will take a reasonably large effort . ”
As for EPIC248847494b itself , well , it ’s not just here to make up numbers . While the satellite is probable a gas giant , all of the gas giants in our Solar System have moons . If this major planet does too , calledexomoons , then its location in the inhabitable zone might just be a great place for life .
“ This is an excellent candidate for undertake to detect exomoons which may well be inhabitable , ” the squad wrote in their newspaper . We have n’t found any exomoons anywhere yet , but it ’s pretty likely they ’re out there , and this might just be a salutary – if tricky – place to look .
René Heller from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany , also not involve in the theme , told IFLScience that the planet “ could potentially host large , Mars - sized moon ” . But these would be “ very , very tough ” to get hold , as the major planet only transit its sensation once every ten years , and there are still doubt in its sphere .
At the very least , we have a great new elbow room to hunt for exoplanets . In the search for potentially inhabitable worlds in range like our own , EPIC248847494b might just be the first of thousands of exciting monotransit satellite .
