Post by Craig on Dec 17, 2011 15:25:50 GMT -5
A few years before the Kepler mission started, I was talking to Geoff Marcy(Professor of Astronomy at Berkeley) about an idea I had for the search of Exoplanets with Earth Based Telescopes.
My idea was, wouldn't it be possible for smaller Telescopes to get in the hunt of Exoplanets by measuring the light of Non-Host stars? What I mean by this is, think about looking into the more denser area's of our Galaxy and using a Non-Host stars light to detect a transit. Essentially, if you have an area that was dense enough with stars, within 1 arcsec, you could you use a star that's behind the other and use it to detect any exoplanets orbiting around the front star. By doing this, wouldn't this also enable us to detect even smaller planets? I know that the 1 arcsec would severely limit us with the number of stars one could search but wouldn't this allow even smaller Telescopes to be able to get in the search? What do you think Ken or anyone else?
Craig
My idea was, wouldn't it be possible for smaller Telescopes to get in the hunt of Exoplanets by measuring the light of Non-Host stars? What I mean by this is, think about looking into the more denser area's of our Galaxy and using a Non-Host stars light to detect a transit. Essentially, if you have an area that was dense enough with stars, within 1 arcsec, you could you use a star that's behind the other and use it to detect any exoplanets orbiting around the front star. By doing this, wouldn't this also enable us to detect even smaller planets? I know that the 1 arcsec would severely limit us with the number of stars one could search but wouldn't this allow even smaller Telescopes to be able to get in the search? What do you think Ken or anyone else?
Craig