Data Analysis Searching for Planets Around Other Stars Our Sun has four rocky pl

by Caaltu · May 24, 2024

Data Analysis
Searching for Planets Around Other Stars
Our Sun has four rocky pl

Data Analysis
Searching for Planets Around Other Stars
Our Sun has four rocky planets, four giant gas planets, five dwarf planets, more than 150 moons, and thousands of asteroids. There are billions of stars in the night sky, many of which have planetary systems of their own. A planet rotating around a distant star is called an exoplanet.
Activities
Go to the NASA Exoplanet Exploration page at https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/. Hover over Explore and select 5 Ways to Find a Planet.
1. Describe each of the five ways astronomers use to detect an exoplanet.
Go to the Exoplanets Data Explorer page at http://exoplanets.org/. Read the information and then click on Table. Clicking on a column title will reorganize the data. Clicking on the units label just below the column title will change units for some columns, such as orbital period.
2. How many total confirmed planets are there? How many unconfirmed planets (Kepler candidates) are there?
3. Earth has a semi-major axis orbit of 1.0 AU. Which exoplanet has a semi-major axis orbit closest to Earth’s orbital size?
4. Earth has an orbital period around our Sun of 365.24 days. Which exoplanet has an orbital period around its star most similar to Earth’s orbital period?
The column labeled Msin(i) lists an estimate for the mass of each exoplanet in terms of its size compared to Jupiter (mjupiter.) Click on (mjupiter) and change the mass unit to Earth Mass (mEarth). A (mearth.) of 5.0 means that the exoplanet is 5 times more massive than Earth.
5. Which planet in the database has a mass most similar to that of Earth?
6. Find the orbital period and semi-major axis for this exoplanet. Is its orbital period longer or shorter than Earth’s orbital period? Is its semi-major axis orbital size larger or smaller than Earth’s orbital size?
7. This planet orbits a star with a temperature similar to Earth’s. Would this planet be habitable for humans? Why or why not?
http://exoplanets.org/table please make sure to get data off the exoplanet data table. It is only 7 questions.