Monthly Archives: February 2015

Planet detection history in 60 seconds

Hugh Osborn, a PhD student on the WASP project at Warwick University, has produced a graphic illustrating the “gold rush” of exoplanet detection in recent times.

The animation shows the planet masses and orbital periods against year of discovery.

Exoplanet gold rush

The symbols are colour-coded according to detection method. The WASP project is responsible for a large fraction of the transiting (green symbol) “hot Jupiters” — massive, short-period planets at upper-left. Kepler has found most of the other transiting exoplanets. For more explanation see Hugh’s blog.

The proposed Twinkle mission to study exoplanet atmospheres

With over a hundred gas-giant exoplanets now known transiting relatively bright stars, thanks to WASP and other projects, scientific attention is being directed to characterising their atmospheres.

The proposed Twinkle spacecraft (Twinkle/Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd)

The proposed Twinkle spacecraft (Twinkle/Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd)

Twinkle is a new proposed satellite, led by a team from University College London, that would be dedicated to studying exoplanet atmospheres. The aim is for a relatively cheap and quick mission, but with a high scientific return.

Twinkle aims to analyse the atmospheres of 100 exoplanets using an infrared spectrograph. By comparing the spectra observed in and out of transit, and spacecraft will detect signatures of molecules in the transiting planet atmospheres.

The project needs £50 million to succeed. WASP planets would be prime targets for Twinkle, and so we hope that Twinkle gets funded and wish it every success.

The Twinkle team invite expressions of support at the Twinkle website.

Giant ring system around a WASP exoplanet?

In April 2007 WASP-South saw a star undergo a complex series of deep dips in its light. One interpretation is that the star was being occulted by a complex ring system surrounding a planet orbiting that star.

A paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, by Matthew Kenworthy and Eric Mamajek, argues that the ring system would have to be 200 times bigger than Saturn’s rings, and is divided up into 37 different rings, perhaps sculpted by the presence of exo-moons orbiting the planet. If true, this is the first strong evidence for both ring systems and moons outside our own Solar System, and would be a notable first for the WASP project.

A press release by the team from the Leiden Observatory and the University of Rochester has been picked up by the BBC and several dozen other websites such as Science News. Accompanying the press release are artist’s illustrations of the ring system (above) and an impression of how the ringed planet might look to us if it were in our own Solar System in place of Saturn.

waspobj_rings2