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    Bustin Exoplanets Final Project PDF

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    Sarah B - she her

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    Bustin Exoplanets Final Project PDF

    Uploaded by

    Sarah B - she her
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    31 views2 pages

    Bustin Exoplanets Final Project PDF

    Uploaded by

    Sarah B - she her

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    Sarah Bustin 12/17/2022 Exoplanets Final Project One of the most intriguing aspects of the study of exopianets is that new observations, and analyses of these observations, shape the current body of knowledge. An example of this atmosphere of discovery is a planet that appears to have migrated into an orbit around the star 51 Pegasi. According to Lin, Bodenheimer, and Richardson, the planet is a gas giant yet orbits close to its star. Their 1996 paper aims to address the problem that the planet is too close to have formed there on its own and attempts to provide a plausible explanation. The authors assert that 51 Pegasi's planetary companion formed much further away, where it was colder and rocks, ice, and gasses could coalesce under the influence of gravity. Then, the planet moved to its present position “through interactions with the remnants of the circumstellar disc”. If true, other planets may have migrated in the past or may migrate in the future in a similar way. To calculate how the planet may have moved closer to 51 Pegasi, Lin, Bodenheimer, and Richardson make several assumptions. First, they infer that the object is in fact a gas giant planet. This inference is justifiable because the planet is about the size of Jupiter, which is also a gas giant. Secondly, the authors claim that the planet formed in the usual method a gas giant is born: gradually building up smaller ice and rock particles until enough mass accumulates to attract gasses. The planet completed its formation before migrating to its new location. Such an assumption is reasonable because “at 0.05 AU the temperature is about 2000 k”, but at large distances it is cold enough for rocks and ices to be present in the disc. Finally, Lin, Bodenheimer, and Richardson assert that “atmospheric motions and convection in the interior redistribute the heat so that the dark side and the bright side have nearly the same temperature”. This is true of most planets with an atmosphere, such as Earth. A new type of observation that would invalidate this work would be the formation of gas giant planets at close distances to their host stars. Another article that presents an interesting finding on exoplanets was written by Vidal-Madjar et. al in 2003, claiming to have observed “an extended upper atmosphere around the extrasolar planet HD209458b". The scientists found evidence of atomic hydrogen absorption during three transits of the planet. This means that the planet is likely a gas giant orbiting close to its star, similar to the planetary companion of 51 Pegasi. The hydrogen line the authors observed is special because it shows little error. Because of this, the authors can remove contamination from the star and look at only the absorption from the planet, Vidal-Madiar et. al also investigated the error and reported that “systematic errors generated through the background corrections are small compared to the statistical errors’. Those errors represent photon counting noise. The authors assume that the observed light is passing through the atmosphere of the planet and the atmosphere of the Earth. Not only do the authors rely on the observations themselves, but also they noticed a bright hot spot on the surface of the star, After a few calculations, Vidal-Madjar et. al concluded that the hot spot did not contribute significantly to the results.

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