PB3A

Observed Properties of Exoplanets: Masses, Orbits, and Metallicities for Kids!

            We all live on the planet Earth.  And we have a really hot and bright sun that we revolve around.  There are also seven other planets that revolve around the sun just like us.  There are large ones, small ones, hot ones, cold ones, and even ones made out of gas.

            Next time you look up at the night sky, notice how there are many bright dots.  Even too may to count!  Each one of those bright dots is another sun like our own.  They are so small because they are very far away.  Much farther than our own sun.  There are big suns, small suns, dense suns, red suns, and even blue suns.

            Many of these far suns have planets just like our sun.  There are large planets, small planets, hot planets, cold planets, gas planets, and even planets similar to our own.

            Since these planets orbit far suns, they are also really far away.  Since they are so far away they are really hard to see.  They are so hard to see that we need to use telescopes because we can’t see them with our naked eyes.  Trying to see these planets is like trying to see grains of sand that are all the way across town!

            The people that look for these planets are called astronomers.  Astronomers want to figure out many things about these planets.  They want to know how heavy they are, how fast the go around their far sun, how close to their far sun they are, what they are made of, and even if there are things living on them.

            Astronomers have many complicated ways of finding these things out about the planets that orbit the far stars.  They can measure how hard the planets pull on the far sun they revolve around.  They can measure how much light they block from their far sun when they go in front of it.  And they can even measure what kind of light the planets absorb.

            Astronomers do this so they can learn more about the universe that we live in, and also to see if any of these planets could have living things on them like our planet Earth.  Maybe one day, you could be an Astronomer too!

Observed Properties of Exoplanets: Masses, Orbits, and Metallicities for Adults.

            Astronomers are interested in learning more about the planets that orbit stars.  They want to know things such as their mass, composition, and information about their orbits.  Astronomers have various methods of doing this.  They can measure the slight gravitational wobbles of the stars that the planets orbit.  They can also measure the slight dimming of the stars when they planet passes in front of it.  They can even measure the absorption lines of the planets.

            Astronomers graph this data and try to find trends in planets in order to better understand things such as how planets form.  All this information helps advance the knowledge of the human race regarding our place in the universe.