Friday, January 16, 2015
Leicester space scientists embark on new
hunt for extraterrestrial worlds
University of
Leicester space scientists are hopening to identify new extraterrestrial worlds
as part of a global project to hunt for distant planets.
Dr Mike Goad, from the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, will lead a team of four space scientists as part of the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS).
Dr Mike Goad, from the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, will lead a team of four space scientists as part of the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS).
The project
will use the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory, in
northern Chile.
It will look
for planets that pass in front of their parent stars, which produce a slight
dimming of the star’s light, that can be detected by sensitive instruments.
The telescope
array will focus on discovering Neptune-sized and smaller planets, with
diameters between two and eight times that of Earth.
Dr Goad said:
“NGTS achieves a level of accuracy unprecedented in all previous ground-based
wide field surveys, and has the potential to discover significant numbers of
Neptune sized to super-Earth sized exoplanets around stars that are
sufficiently bright for the all-important follow-up studies with larger ground-
and space-based facilities.”
The NGTS is a
wide-field observing system made up of an array of twelve telescopes.
This new
facility, built by a UK, Swiss and German consortium, was constructed in
northern Chile because of the superb observing conditions and excellent support
facilities at this site.
Don Pollacco,
of the University of Warwick, who is working with the Leicester team, said: “We
needed a site where there were many clear nights and the air was clear and dry
so that we could make very accurate measurements as often as possible — Paranal
was the best choice by far.”
The other
scientists from Leicester working on the project are Dr Matthew Burleigh, Dr
Sarah Casewell, Andrew Grange and Alex Chaushev.
They will play
a key role using the university’s Space Research Centre facilities to monitor
the performance of each of the 12 NGTS cameras.
Dr Burleigh
said: “Nasa’s orbiting Kepler mission has made some amazing discoveries,
including planets similar in size to Earth.
“But these
worlds mainly orbit stars that are too faint and too distant for further study.
“NGTS will
discover small planets around nearby, bright stars, that are ideal for
detecting and investigating the planet's atmospheres.”
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