Newly Discovered Planets
You will find the maps (constellations) and the actual photographs of the stars
that are found to have planets... (These images are large so if you have
a slow internet connection, please be patient! Please feel free to
e-mail
me if you have questions regarding these images.)
How do we detect a planet on another star system? First of all, a planet is
about a billion times dimmer than a star so it's lost in a glare of a bright
star. However, the gravitational force of the planet makes the star to move
with respect to a common center of mass. In other words, both the star and
the planet move about an imaginary point in space--center of mass. Therefore,
it causes the star to wobble or doppler shifts, blue shift when it moves toward
the observer and red shift when it moves away from the observer. This is what the
astronomers are trying to detect, the wobbling of the stars... Using Kepler's third
law and Newton's laws of motion and gravity, we can calculate how big or massive
the planet has to be to cause the star to have that variation in orbit.
Since October of 1995, astronomers have found planets (and
counting...).
51 Pegasi
47 Ursae Majoris
70 Virginis
55 Cancri
HD114762 in Coma Berenices
Tau Bootis (HR5185)
Here is the list of
stars
that Dr. Marcy's group is currently observing!
For further information and update regarding the planetary search, check
out
this site or Jean Schneider's
of France.
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