Questions tagged [exoplanet]
Questions regarding planets that lie outside the Solar System.
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Consequences of strong wind on an alien Planet on the possibility of life
I was surprised to learn recently that Neptune has winds of 1500 miles an hour.
My question is whether life could ever evolve on such a Planet that has such powerful winds? Not necessarily on ...
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Why pulsar pulses are so extremely regular?
It's often said that the pulses of the pulsar have a very precise period, which helps to detect easily exoplanets that cause fluctuations in the time of arrival (TOA) of the pulses. Anybody knows why?
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Could the mineral composition of planets explain the absence of megastructures?
The Fermi paradox concerns why we don't observe evidence of alien life, such as megastructures. If we were to build a Dyson swarm, the best source material may be Mercury (Armstrong and Sandberg 2013):...
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1answer
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Derivation of the orbital parameters of a exoplanet discovered by direct imaging
I wonder which orbital elements of a exoplanet can be found only applying direct imaging. I know that the angular separation combined with parallax can give us the semi-major axis, but what about the ...
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1answer
71 views
Could a gas giant orbit a star with a 30 year period at a distance of just 1 AU?
Assuming a star with similar properties to our sun, could a gas giant orbit it with an orbital period similar to that of Saturn, but, at a much closer orbital distance, more similar to 1 AU?
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1answer
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What is this gap between hot and cold Jupiters?
When plotting mass to semi major axis on exoplanets.org, there seems to be a gap between Hot Jupiters and Cold Jupiters. A lot of Jupiter-mass planets at less than 0.1 AU have been discovered, and a ...
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Is Jupiter still an anomaly?
I remember a few years ago hearing that Jupiter was an anomaly in the landscape of exoplanets. Back then, most Jupiter-mass planets discovered were Hot Jupiters, orbiting very close to their host star....
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How many exoplanets have been found around binary stars?
This XKCD whatif talks about circumbinary and [the other kind of] exoplanets. How many such exoplanets have actually been discovered?
I tried to look it up at exoplanets.org, but didn't find a column ...
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Is it possible to build a ground-based telescope that can directly image Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of sunlike stars?
In the following discussion I will refer to Earth-like exoplanets planets orbiting in the habitable zone of sunlike stars simply as “Earth-like exoplanets."
NASA is currently developing or ...
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1answer
62 views
What is the least dense exoplanet?
An exoplanet with density 0.31 grams per cubic centimeter has been found. Is this the least dense exoplanet we know of?
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1answer
341 views
Troop of moving stars through a straight line [duplicate]
Last night,I and my brother suddenly saw that some(50-60) dots of light( exactly like stars) were moving through a straight line(from NW to SE) above us with same velocity and towards exactly same ...
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Why does the transit method work so well for planet hunting? [duplicate]
This may seem like a duplicate of A few questions regarding the transit of planets and Orbital plane evolution and planet discovery via transit method, but...
How is it that we've been able to ...
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Can primordial black holes be found orbiting other stars?
A recent study suggests a that a primordial black hole may be orbiting the sun at and that they can be common near other star systems.
What measurements and equipment can perhaps find BH's near ...
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1answer
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Are warm circumstellar debris disks still able to be detected at sub-millimeter wavelengths?
At these wavelengths a survey is more sensitive to detecting relatively cool disks (T<100k), but would a telescope operating in the sub-millimeter be less sensitive to warm debris disk than say, a ...
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1answer
114 views
Given that Kepler's Third Law as stated on most websites doesn't include mass, how does it work for planets in other star systems? [duplicate]
Kepler's Third Law as stated on websites I found while searching for "how to convert between a planet's orbital period and semi major axis" is $P^2 = A^3$ where P is the orbital period in years and A ...
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1answer
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Exoplanets, Protoplanets, and planetesimals
So, most of the mass of the solar system (that isn't inside the sun) is inside Jupiter. And most of whats left after THAT is inside Saturn. So, all the rocky planets, moons, and asteroids in our solar ...
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134 views
Can we calculate the orbit of exoplanets?
I'm not an astronomer, but the question came up and I'm interested if we are able (or how accurate we are able) to calculate the orbital parameters of an exoplanet. Since the transit method must yield ...
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Can we see evidence of sunspots on other stars
Searching for exoplanets by measuring the change of a stars brightness when an exoplanet transits the star's disk also has the potential to detect exo-sunspots. Have they ever been detected?
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Would two Earth-like planets on opposite sides of a Sol-like star at about 1 AU be a stable configuration?
Would two Earth-like planets on opposite sides of a Sol-like star at about 1 AU be a relatively stable configuration? I understand that there are tadpole-like orbits and the two planets may not stay ...
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1answer
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By convention, when observing an exoplanet, is the observer's line of sight (on Earth) perpendicular to the plane of sky?
This is just a quick question. In this picture of the orbit of an exoplanet, is the observer's line of sight perpendicular to the plane of reference, which is in the +z direction on the diagram? In ...
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Would the WISE Survey pick up a large planetary collisions like Theia-Earth? And from how far?
WISE or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer
Large body collisions are obviously, very very rare, locally speaking, and with stars, often spiraling inwards not direct collisions. I know that stellar ...
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1answer
95 views
Are gas giants actually rare?
Kepler data suggests that the vast majority of planets are smaller than 4 Earth radii, with larger planets quickly becoming vanishingly scarce. Yet somehow, our own solar system harbours not just one, ...
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Are the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system so close that inhabitants on one planet could see surface details on the other planets?
In a discussion below the Space Exploration question Are there any to-scale diagrams of the TRAPPIST-1 system I was invited to ask a question like this, so I have.
Question: Are the planets in the ...
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1answer
92 views
What is the relative velocity between planets in different solar systems?
Is it possible to estimate what the difference in velocity is between the earth and another convenient exoplanet? Or perhaps just our star and a near neighbour?
I'd be curious where I could find the ...
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1answer
72 views
Why would a tidally-locked rocky planet have a first-order spherical harmonic surface temperature distribution?
The new Letter to Nature Absence of a thick atmosphere on the terrestrial exoplanet LHS 3844b (also ArXiv) analyzes the thermal infrared light curve from the system (about 4.5 to 5.5 um). The planet ...
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1answer
195 views
View of other planets from the Earth
There appears to be varying positions/spots of view of other planets from Earth, if I'm not wrong. Now, given that all planets are on the same plane, why do their positions change on the night sky for ...
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Why are there no photos of exoplanets?
There are a lot of photos of diffrent astronomial objects such as galaxies, nebulae and stars of which some are very far away.
However there are no real photos of exoplanets (by “real photos” I mean ...
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1answer
34 views
Any plans for TESS after it finishes northern sky survey?
TESS has provided the astronomy community with a treasure trove of information.
Once TESS completes its one year survey of the northern sky, are there any plans for an extended mission?
Just seems ...
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1answer
238 views
How would water-ammonia oceans behave?
Scientists strongly suspect that several moons in our solar system have frozen-over oceans of water-ammonia mixture. I've also read speculations on the possibility of surface water-ammonia oceans on ...
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Could an Applegate-like mechanism operate in AM CVn systems?
One of the controversies surrounding the detection of exoplanets around post-common envelope binaries is the possibility that the orbital period variations observed might be the result of the ...
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1answer
63 views
periodic inclination change circumbinary planet
I am studying circumbinary planets and I made a python model to calculate certain properties of the orbits, and when I calculate the inclination I get a sine wave.
I do not see a way to predict the ...
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1answer
39 views
Plot SuperWasp Lightcurves
I am trying to plot superwasp lightcurves in python from the fits files, using TMID and FLUX2, getting this:
There is a way to transform the information so I can plot the lightcurves with the kepler ...
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88 views
How Reliable is Bode's Law?
Is Bode's Law just a series of remarkable coincidences,or would it hold good for other solar systems where the star is similar to our sun?
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How actively is Deep Learning being used in exoplanet identification?
Papers, like this one from Google, show that Deep Learning and Machine Learning are effective in detecting exoplanets from luminosity data provided by telescopes like TESS or Kepler.
These models ...
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What maintains the high orbital eccentricity of many exo-planets near their sun?
Over the last decade we've discovered that many exoplanets not only have highly eccentric orbits, but also orbit very close to their sun. This is true of many classes of stars.
I definitely have a ...
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Are exoplanets which are above escape velocity of particular interest?
I was perusing the exoplanet database and looking for some of the more extreme orbits, when I happened upon HD 20782 B:
http://exoplanets.org/detail/HD_20782_b
Which is also listed (in two sentences)...
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1answer
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Could an Earth-like magnetic field protect life at exoplanet Proxima Centauri b?
I took a look at Wikipedia's page for Proxima Centauri b, the exoplanet that orbits Proxima Centauri, where it is said it is expected to receive 2000 times of stellar wind pressures than on Earth.
It ...
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4answers
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Is it plausible for a planet that is positioned in the habitable area of a solar system to have little extractable metals?
I am big fan of Asimov's Foundation and I am wondering about the plausibility of some of Foundation's imagined words.
According to this article Terminus was a special world with little metals:
It ...
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0answers
62 views
Why does the number of extrasolar planets vary in different sources?
There are at least three catalogues that are counting up-to-date discovered exoplanets. What criteria do they use to count the number of planets? Every catalogue has a different count value.
So at ...
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Frequency of Earth type cores?
I've read many interesting threads concerning the composition of different planet cores in the solar system while trying to see if this question has already been asked. It appears as if Earth is ...
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1answer
40 views
At what annual rate are new exoplanets being recognized? How does it compare to new asteroids?
I just read the BBC News article Exoplanet tally set to pass 4,000 mark
. It makes me wonder about the annual rate that new exoplanets being recognized, and how it compares to the rate of new ...
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1answer
62 views
Compare this planet to Earth and determined its habitability (can humans live in this environment?) [closed]
I'm given this set of data and I need to describe the habitability. Would this not be habitable since the temperature of the albedo and the equilibrium is similar to Earth's or does the Spectral Type ...
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1answer
62 views
What's fixed in Ariel that is moving in other planet-hunting space telescopes?
The BBC News article UK will lead European exoplanet mission says:
Steady platform
And one aspect that would work in Ariel's favour is the absence of any moving parts in its build, commented ...
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2answers
107 views
How to calculate the argument of perihelion for exoplanets with incomplete orbital elements?
I'm trying to simulate the Kepler-444 exoplanetary system using data from this website. The problem is that there is no argument of periapsis parameter for the Kepler-444 system, so while I think I'm ...
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1answer
627 views
Is there any habitable exoplanet around Tau Ceti?
I was wondering.. is there any habitable exoplanet around Tau Ceti?
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How do we know that an exoplanet is tidally locked to the parent star?
Often in discussing exoplanets we hear that they are close to the parent star (usually a red dwarf) but then there's a caveat that the planet is tidally locked to that star and that that fact severely ...
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1answer
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What happened to the third planet in the Kepler-47 system?
In 2012, the discovery paper for the multiplanet circumbinary system Kepler-47 mentioned a potential third transiting planet in the system:
A 0.2% deep transit-like event is present at time 2,455,...
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113 views
What’s the closest earth like planet we have discovered in our galaxy? [closed]
What’s the closest earth like planet or moon to earth we have discovered in our galaxy?
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118 views
Is Naboo's core possible in real life?
In Star Wars, the planet Naboo has a plasma core, instead of a molten one.
Can a planet really have a plasma core?
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Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observing modes
I have been reading some literature on using the HST to take spectra of exoplanet atmospheres when exoplanets transit in front of their stars. The literature mention two modes of observations, '...
