→ Widely unknown Exoplanet Astronomer

Two aircraft spotters make sure no aircrafts pass close to the laser beam.

A few of the larger telescopes today use laser beams and adaptive optics in order to get a sharper image of the skies. The adaptive optics system works by having a closed loop system calculate how the atmosphere is warping the image of a star, and uses a deformable mirror to correct for this. The changes in the atmosphere happens very fast so the deformable mirror is changing it’s shape on the order of milliseconds. For this to work the star has to be of a certain brightness as long exposures won’t work. A lot of the time however there are no stars in the field of view of the telescope which are bright enough thus it is necessary to create a “fictitious star”. This fictitious star is created by bouncing a strong laser light of the upper atmosphere.

Check this video to see an animation about how it is done: http://goo.gl/T3wm6

The beauty of exoplanet transits is that they can be observed with amateur equipment and doesn’t require that you have access to a professional telescope located at a prime observing site. To be able to succeed at observing a transit you do need to know what you are doing. Here I will very briefly mention things to keep in mind.

Equipment needed

First off, good data analysis skills are very important and should not be underestimated. If you don’t know what you are doing and why, it won’t really matter how good your equipment is. To be able to observe exoplanet transits you will need a telescope which is able to track the sky accurately. An auto guiding system is essential. The greater the aperture of the telescope the greater signal to noise you will get and the easier you will detect the exoplanet. An 8 inch telescope will be able to detect exoplanets orbiting a star of magnitude 10 or less. With a 12 inch most transiting exoplanets will be available for observing.

Detector needed

Any 16 bit CCD camera should do the job. Dark current for instance is not so important as the exposures taken are about 30 seconds long.

Targets

The transiting exoplanets which you will be able to observe will depend on the size of the telescope you have. I would recommend to start of with the brightest objects such as HD 209458 or HD 189733.

Software

Once you have the data there are a number of ways which you can reduce the images. Examples are IRAF and MaxIm

Resources:

I highly recommend a great Ebook by Bruce L. Gary: Exoplanet observing for amateurs

A presentation by Michael Theusner: Exoplanet transit observations with amateur equipment

I was asked today if I would like to travel to Hawaii next month and observe binary stars using the 3.6 meter CFHT telescope. With a passion for observing and also never having been to Hawaii before I said yes. I plan to cover my trip and also share the experiences of what it is like to be an observational astronomer so stay tuned.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWSP) is a large space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2014. It has frequently been referred to as the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. One major difference to be aware of between this space telescope and Hubble is that the James Webb Space Telescope will be observing mainly at infrared wavelengths. The JWST will amongst other things study the first galaxies formed, peer through dusty clouds to view stars forming planetary systems and survey the distant universe at IR-wavelengths, but what exactly is it expected to do for exoplanet research?

The James Webb Space Telescope

According to the NASA JWST website:

” The James Webb Space Telescope will study the physical and chemical properties of solar systems (including our own) and where the building blocks of life may be present. “

After doing some research on the web I found that the James Webb Space Telescope  is expected to be able to:

• Image / characterize planets with a wide range of masses and separations
• Identify atmospheric gasses not yet discovered such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane (using the transit method) in Hot Jupiters (and possibly characterize the atmospheres of Super Earths).
• Detect planet features by studying only a single transit event
• Detect thermal emission from super-Earths in the habitable zone which transit M stars by studing a few transits