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Category: astro
Posted on: December 27, 2006 10:04 PM, by Steinn Sigurðsson
COROT launched successfully on a Soyuz
COROT is a small transit survey telescope, launched by CNES (France) to look for low mass planets. Secondary science is astroseismology and stellar structure from high precision photometry time series.
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Comments
"Low mass" meaning less than the Saturn- or Neptune-sized smallest yet observed extrasolar planets. Not counting the smallest of the 3 around that pulsar, which are probably the cores of former Jovians stripped cleran by supernova, as first suggested in print (in fiction, beforehand!) by Science Fiction author Poul Anderson, who had wanted to be an astrophysicist. He told me that seeing his name in print, in a footnote of an astrophysics journal, was a high point of his life.
Anyway, we are awaiting discovery of Earth-sized planets around other stars. That will be a very big deal indeed, in some sense completing the Copernican revolution.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | December 28, 2006 1:37 PM
The planets around PSR1257+12 (of which there are now 4), are almost certainly not ablated cores of pre-existing planets - the pulsar kinematics and current orbits of the planets essentially preclude that possibility.
The planets almost certainly formed post-supernova from a gas poor debris disk, either a "fall-back" disk from the supernova, or a debris disk from disrupted low mass stellar companion or high mass planet.
The two lower mass PSR1257+12 planets are sub-terran in mass.
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | December 28, 2006 1:48 PM
I have a long-held question about the population distribution of exoplanets that somone who comments here might be able to answer. As briefly as possible, how much of what we know about the size/orbit distribution is a result of observation bias? I feel like I mainly hear about close-in superjovians, but those are also clearly the easiest to detect. With current technology, are there enough planets that we don't see, but would if they were there, to draw meaningful conclusions?
Should Kepler help with this?
Posted by: Jake | December 30, 2006 8:50 PM