Blog | PaulAnthonyWilson.com

Blog

About anything which interests me really.
rpm

Zoom’s rpm packages are signed with a GPG key. To verify that the rpm file has not been interfered with you can do the following: Download the rpm file and GPG key from here. Import the GPG key and check the fingerprint by executing the following in your terminal (in the folder where you downloaded the rpm file and GPG key): [bash]sudo rpm –import package-signing-key.pub gpg –fingerprint [/bash] Scroll …

Read More
EMEZhnLWoAADrVz

PLATO and CHEOPS are two European Space Agency missions aimed at characterising exoplanets. CHEOPS is an S-class mission (small mission in ESA’s science program) which aims to characterise exoplanets already known to be orbiting around nearby bright stars. CHEOPS will target Earth- to Neptune-sized planets. PLATO is an M-class mission (medium size mission) aimed at finding  terrestrial exoplanets in orbits out to the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-type stars …

Read More
Bpic_system_hires_2048px_shifted

Beta Pictoris is one of the most ideal targets for studying planet formation. The young 23 Myr system consists of a bright central star (easily visible with the naked eye) surrounded by a edge-on debris disk composed of dust and gas. The system has also been photographed repeatedly with direct imaging (discovery paper) which has revealed the presence of a giant planet which we see moving here (the star …

Read More
clint-adair-BW0vK-FA3eg-unsplash

A real problem in the space situational awareness community, is the lack of a shared validated catalogue of known space debris. This holds back progress in a wide range of areas from operations to fundamental research. Could an open, borderless, decentralised, trusteless space object catalogue be the solution? If so, how could one ensure the catalogue was tamper proof? For an entirely open ledger of space debris objects to work, …

Read More
PLATO-Satellite-in-space_artist_s-impression_(c)_OHB-System-AG

High resolution up-to-date images of the PLATO exoplanet mission are hard to find. I’ll collect high resolution PLATO images here as I come across them. Download Image3500 x 2121 pixels, 3.6 MBCopyright: OHB System AGCredit: OHB System AG

Read More
eberhard-grossgasteiger-338314-unsplash

Our new paper is out today on the first detection of nitrogen in the famous planetary system: β Pictoris. The debris disc surrounding β Pictoris has a gas composition rich in carbon and oxygen, relative to solar abundances. Two possible scenarios have been proposed to explain this enrichment: 1. The gas being naturally rich in C and O. 2. Radiation pressure from the star expels the gas outwards, leaving …

Read More
PLATO_Hab

One of the key scientific goals of PLATO is to detect terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-type stars (up to orbits of one year), and characterise their bulk properties to determine their habitability. Earth remains the only known example where life has successfully emerged, and we can’t yet say what conditions are most suitable for life. We use the HZ as a tool to determine which …

Read More
plato_mission

The PLATO mission will monitor the brightness variations of more than 200,000 stars to look for planets which transit their host stars. TESS will also utilise the transit technique to focus on targeting bright host stars, to look for Earth-sized planets. It is thus not surprising when people end up thinking: why launch two space-based exoplanet spacecraft to look for Earth-sized planets? The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched …

Read More
Credit: T. Pyle (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA.

This summer will be the first time that we’ll be able to observe the Hill sphere of a directly imaged exoplanet as it passes in front of its host star! The exoplanet, Beta Pictoris b, is a young (~20 million years old) planet orbiting the star beta Pictoris. Here is an image showing the planet photographed in 2003 and then later in 2009: As chance would have it, we see …

Read More
1522060_10100165838591156_1177610574_n

I came across this image whilst doing some work and it made me halt my work for a bit as I was taken by it’s beauty. What is seen is an extremely tiny part of the sky, which like any other part of the sky, is just filled with galaxies which each one of them host on the order of a hundred billion stars. In fact, if you look …

Read More