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    Exoplanets: by Ben Barrett, Riley Brown, and Daniel Courtney

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    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered thanks to telescopes like Kepler. The first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, was discovered in 1995 and orbits so closely to its star that it completes an orbit in just 4 days. Kepler discovered over 3,300 exoplanets between 2009-2013. While most discovered planets so far have been gas giants, NASA hopes future missions like TESS will find smaller, Earth-like planets that could support life.

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    Exoplanets: by Ben Barrett, Riley Brown, and Daniel Courtney

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    Ben
    330 views10 pages
    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered thanks to telescopes like Kepler. The first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, was discovered in 1995 and orbits so closely to its star that it completes an orbit in just 4 days. Kepler discovered over 3,300 exoplanets between 2009-2013. While most discovered planets so far have been gas giants, NASA hopes future missions like TESS will find smaller, Earth-like planets that could support life.

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    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered thanks to telescopes like Kepler. The first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, was discovered in 1995 and orbits so closely to its star that it completes an orbit in just 4 days. Kepler discovered over 3,300 exoplanets between 2009-2013. While most discovered planets so far have been gas giants, NASA hopes future missions like TESS will find smaller, Earth-like planets that could support life.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    330 views10 pages

    Exoplanets: by Ben Barrett, Riley Brown, and Daniel Courtney

    Uploaded by

    Ben
    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered thanks to telescopes like Kepler. The first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, was discovered in 1995 and orbits so closely to its star that it completes an orbit in just 4 days. Kepler discovered over 3,300 exoplanets between 2009-2013. While most discovered planets so far have been gas giants, NASA hopes future missions like TESS will find smaller, Earth-like planets that could support life.

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    Exoplanets

    By Ben Barrett, Riley Brown, and Daniel Courtney


    What is an Exoplanet?
    - Any planet that orbits another star besides our sun outside of our solar
    system.

    - Thanks to the Kepler space telescope thousands have been discovered


    relatively recently
    Brief History of Exoplanets
    - After the Kepler space telescope was sent into space the team noticed an
    Earth like planet outside our solar system.
    - As NASA puts it in their article on exoplanets, this planet was an early nugget
    in the coming gold rush of exoplanet discovery
    - After the first confirmed exoplanet in 1995 astronomers have found thousands
    more and are predicting more in the trillions
    The First Exoplanet
    - In 1995 the first exoplanet was discovered to be a gas giant, about half the
    size of jupiter, that orbits so close to its parent star that it only takes 4 days for
    it to orbit.
    - Because of this close proximity to the star, its wobble was very noticeable to
    telescopes.
    - This planet was named 51 Pegasi b
    The Kepler Space Telescope
    - Was launched in 2009 to find more exoplanets

    - Around 3,300 confirmed exoplanets found

    - Kepler's data is still revealing new planets to us but the failure of two reaction
    wheels ended its mission early, in 2013
    What Makes Up An Exoplanet
    - Using the space telescopes, NASA can tell what the planets atmospheres are
    made of thanks to light spectrums
    - According to NASA, as the planet makes it way around its star it gives off a
    little sliver of light, and from this light telescopes can take a spectrum to find
    out what makes up the atmosphere of the planet
    The Future of Exoplanet Discovery
    A mission that is planning on launching in 2018 called TESS(Transiting Exoplanet
    Survey Satellite). This satellite will survey the entire sky in search for more
    exoplanets. It will be a two year survey and will target over 200,000 stars. This
    study is to find Earth like planets so hopefully humans can find other life in our
    universe
    Direct Imaging
    - Rather than using detections in a star's wobble, astronomers are starting to
    use direct imaging of exoplanets.
    - Although very difficult if a planet is big enough then you could detect it using
    this method
    - The First exoplanet to be imaged this way was 2M1207 in 2004
    Habitable Planets
    - In the past 20 years NASA has found thousands of planets that are around
    the same size as Earth but most of them appear to be ice or gas giants
    - However, they have found some rocky ones as well, and only time will tell if
    they have the material to support human life
    Work Cited
    https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/

    https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/the-search-for-life/exoplanets-101/

    http://www.space.com/17738-exoplanets.html

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