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Confirm 100 Exoplanets At Once! (With Video)

If you have a bit of time, check out this relaxed presentation with Tony Darnell as he discusses with Jessie Christiansen, David Ciardi, and Courtney Dressing (Caltech) the techniques used to combine clever ideas and several telescopes to find these planets.


(Afternoon astronomy coffee hangout)

An extraordinary discovery of numerous exoplanets was made by combining NASA's K2 mission data with follow-up observations by ground-based telescopes including the W. M. Keck Observatory and Gemini on Mauna Kea, and a twin Gemini telescope in Chile. Of the numerous exoplanet candidates found, more than 100 are confirmed planets. One system has four planets possibly similar to Earth.

The researchers are using the new method for observing with the planet finding Kepler telescope, a mission called “K2”. In the new observing scheme, the satellite is moved to different fields making innovative studies possible. By using multiple observatories world wide, the researchers could verify and diagnose the exo-planets..

Master of Golden Age science fiction Edmond Hamilton described the idea of an automated habitable planet-finding telescope in his 1936 short story Cosmic Quest:

I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.

These instruments were the wonderful ones our astronomers had perfected. With super-telescopic eyes each one scanned a part of the star field before them. And each mechanical eye, when it found planetary systems in its field, automatically shifted upon them a higher powered telespectroscope which recorded on permanent film the size, mean temperature and atmospheric conditions of these worlds.
(Read more about Hamilton's search for habitable planets)


(The telespectroscope recorded the conditions of these other worlds)

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/27/2016)

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Current News

'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'

Epirus High-Power Microwave Defeats Drones
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'

Cloud Of Space Rubbish From China's Long March Rocket
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'

Biomimetic Tendons From Rochu Robotics
'... the curious parallelism to animal motions.'

Living Human Neuron Biological Compute Rack
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'

Martha Stewart Approves Ojai 'Living Room On Wheels'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'

ESA's Draco To Study Heat Of Reentry
'...a synthetic which air-friction would erode.'

Buy A Galaxy? Maybe Start Smaller
'The sky is the limit' just got higher.

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'Is our orbit to Space Academy clear?'

Is There A Global Problem With Who Is Having Children?
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'

You Will Eat The Cookies Made From Plastic...
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'

It's A Giant Robot! You Reporters Have Been Warned!
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'

Birds Learn To Sing Pictures ala Frank Herbert's Distrans
'We will fight in the time of fighting.'

ElectionSim: China's 'Ender's Game' Battle Sim, Or Lem's 'Kingdom In A Box'?
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'

Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'

Flock Stymied By 'Adversarial Fashion'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'

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