How many planets at Alpha Centuri?

Okay, now we've seen (or have logged) up to 10 of those things in our
own system.

So any guesses on how many at Alpha Centuri? Gotta be 10 at least or
more...

Here's a paper on that---

http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ah...ar-planets.htm

Watcha reckong?

eridanus

eridanus riviera wrote:
Okay, now we've seen (or have logged) up to 10 of those things in our
own system.

So any guesses on how many at Alpha Centuri? Gotta be 10 at least or
more...

Here's a paper on that---

http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ah...ar-planets.htm

Watcha reckong?

eridanus



Some data
http://exoplanets.org/
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/planets/
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/planets/catalog.html
http://www.edu-observatory.org/eo/planets.html (links near botton)

I reckon gas is going up further ... lots further.

eridanus riviera wrote:

Okay, now we've seen (or have logged) up to 10 of those things in our
own system.

So any guesses on how many at Alpha Centuri? Gotta be 10 at least or
more...

Here's a paper on that---

http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ah...ar-planets.htm

Watcha reckong?

eridanus

north sea oil running out i hear...

How many planets at Alpha Centauri?

Perhaps the question is not so much 'how many planets there might be'
but 'how soon we could look for them in a proper way'.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder mission is not due for launch before 2014
at the earliest, and I suspect there is not much room for prioritising
it in any way, because of the complex technology that will be involved.

But I remain optimistic we'll find those planets soon enough!

Abdul Ahad

How will the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission locate new planets? Is it
some type of new space telescope?


wrote in message
oups.com...
How many planets at Alpha Centauri?

Perhaps the question is not so much 'how many planets there might be'
but 'how soon we could look for them in a proper way'.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder mission is not due for launch before 2014
at the earliest, and I suspect there is not much room for prioritising
it in any way, because of the complex technology that will be involved.

But I remain optimistic we'll find those planets soon enough!

Abdul Ahad

Mij Adyaw wrote:
How will the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission locate new planets? Is it
some type of new space telescope?

It'll be a space-based long baseline interferometric telescope,
working in the infrared band. The 'scope will be tailored for
selectively blocking the overwelming light from a star in order to be
able to detect the vastly less bright light from small planets on orbit
nearby.

In order to image a planetary disc at such small angular size the
instrument must have an enormous light collecting aperture. A single
objective mirror of such size will be impossible, so the aperture will
be created synthetically by having several smaller independent
telescopes which will systematically combine their images by wave
interference to create a high resolution picture.

Huge synthetic apertures are already in use commonly for radio
observatories, and lately a few optical & infrared interferometers have
been built. The Very Large Array is the most famous such radio
telescope with an effective aperture of several miles, and the twin
Keck optical telescopes on Hawaii create an aperture of about 200 feet.


-Mark Martin

"Mij Adyaw" wrote in message
news:ToyIe.30746$bp.9030@fed1read03...

How will the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission locate new planets? Is it
some type of new space telescope?

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_index.html

We also have the Darwin mission to follow along with TPF. Once the
Earth-like planets have been located around nearby stars, that mission
will help answer the next big question in the chain: do they contain
the signatures of life?

More he-

http://www.darwin.rl.ac.uk/overview.htm

The next couple of decades are going to be very very exciting!

Roll on 2015.... :-)

AA

A tri-star system would be the most tricky place to see a solar system
Bert