Catherine Docil

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PPRELOD HIFTSS NDA

TANSITSR ANC EB SEDU
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Doppler shifts and
transits can be used to
detect extra solar
planets?
Let's start with the Doppler
shift:
 This is an effect that impacts all waves on one
way or another, but impacts on electromagnetic
waves (ie, light) in a very specific way: when an
object recedes from us, it will appear “redder”
to us, and when it approaches us it will appear
“bluer”. Well…how can this possibly be used to
detect planets? Flashback to your high school
physics classes. Remember when your teacher
told you the planets in our Solar System orbit
the Sun? Newsflash: they don't.
 Really?
 Really! To understand my point, imagine the following

thought experiment: imagine one object of mass “M”, and
another object of mass “m”. Imagine for a moment that
M>m. Who orbits who? You'll probably be imagining that m
orbits M, right? Now imagine M=m. Who orbits who now?
Aha! In fact, when M=m, both objects orbit around a point
halfway between the two; this is called the center of mass
(or barycenter, in celestial mechanics). If we increase the
mass of M, this center of mass will get closer and closer to
M, but will only be exactly at the location of M when the
mass of M goes to infinity! If M is the mass of a star and m is
the mass of the planet, then you can see that the sole
existence of the mass m will make the mass M to “dance”
around the barycenter of the system, like in this “Picture”:
 Figure: “dance” of a star due to a planet.
 We can actually detect this dance using the
Doppler effect because, you know, stars are
pretty bright, and thus we can study the Doppler
shift of its light as it dances around the barycenter
(like in the bottom part of the diagram above,
which shows how the light of the star moves as
the star dances!). The important thing about this
exoplanet detection method is, precisely, the
dependance on the mass of the planet: the more
massive the planet, the larger is the speed of the
dance of the star! This method, thus, gives us
information about the mass* of the planet!
Now transits:
 Transits are much easier to understand. The
transit method relies on the detection of a planet
thanks to the apparent decrease in brightness of
a star due to the passage of a planet in front of it.
Given a fixed size of the star (which is “more or
less” easy to infer from other measurements),
the larger the planet is, the larger the amount of
light it blocks and, thus, the larger the decrease
in brightness of the star. This method, thus,
gives you information about the size of the
planet.
 If you think about it, however, this alignment is
actually really hard to see, because the star that
“hosts” the planet, the planet and you, have to
be almost on the same line in order to see the
alignment. However, this is right now one of
the most popular methods for exoplanet
detection, thanks to dedicated missions (such
as Kepler) that have stared at millions of stars,
looking for these tiny decrements in light from
those stars.
 Kepler’s third law dictates that the square of
the time-period of this oscillation (T2) varies
directly with the cube of the planet’s distance
from the host star (r3).
 T2=4π2GMr3
 The velocity of this planet, in a standard

Newtonian orbit, vp, is:
 vp=GMr−−−−√
The measurements can be made
from the data below:
As a final note:
 It is interesting to observe that the Doppler
and the transit method are very
complementary. By both detecting the Doppler
and the transit signal you get the radius and
the mass of the planet, allowing you to
compute it's density. This gives you an idea of
the bulk composition of the planet, and allows
you to say if it is perhaps rocky or gaseous!
 : Actually, the Doppler method only gives you
the minimum mass of the planet. This is
because the inclination of the orbit is unknown
and, thus, you don't know if the star is dancing,
eg, slowly just because it is dancing with the
planet tilted towards you, or because the planet
is actually not that massive. This degeneracy,
however, can be broken with the transit
method.
Answer the following questions:
1. This is an effect that impacts all waves on one

way.
2. This is a method relies on the detection of a
planet thanks to the apparent decrease in
brightness of a star due to the passage of a planet
in front of it.
3. When an object recedes from us, it will appear
“_____” to us.
4. When it approaches us it will appear “____”.
5. _____ third law dictates..

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PPRELOD HIFTSS NDA

 Really! To understand my point, imagine the following

 The velocity of this planet, in a standard

1. This is an effect that impacts all waves on one

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