the corot satellite
TRANSCRIPT
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The CoRoT Satellite:the search for Earth-like planets
PERFORMED BY: JOANA CAROLA AND CATARINA ALVES
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CoRoT Satellite
On 27 December 2006, the French space agency
(CNES) and ESA launched the CoRoT satellite to:
study the convection (Co) from the interior of a star;
study the rotation (Ro) of stars;
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CoRoT Satellite
detect planetary transits (T) – exoplanets
that pass between Earth and the star;
detect starquakes – acoustical waves
generated deep inside a star that send
ripples across its surface.
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27 cm primary mirror;
Camera that takes one picture every 32 seconds;
A very precise photometer (or light meter);
A computer that measures the star´s light.
The satellite is directed at the same spot in the sky
for up to 150 days at a time.
CoRoT Instruments
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When a planet in orbit around a star passes between the CoRoT satellite and the star,
it can be detected as a small dip occurring periodically in the star’s light output.
Planetary Transits
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This plot shows the transit of the first exoplanet discovered by CoRoT: CoRoT-Exo-1b.
The decrease in the luminosity of the star occurs when the planet passes in front of the star
every 1.51 days. It is a very hot giant planet, similar to Jupiter in mass and size.
Planetary Transits
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CoRoT can detect planets that are close to their star and
as small as our own Earth.
At 3 February 2009, CoRoT has found an amazing planet:
COROT-Exo-7b is less than twice the size of Earth;
It orbits a Sun-like star once every 20 hours;
It is located very close to its parent star and has a
high temperature, between 1000 and 1500 °C;
It may be rocky and covered in liquid lava or water vapour.
Small and Rocky Exoplanets
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Finding small and rocky (Earth-like) planets
outside our Solar System is important:
to know if our planet is unique;
to understand how life arose on Earth.
Small and Rocky Exoplanets
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It is believed that life must be linked to the
presence of liquid water on a rocky planets.
Finding an exoplanet as small as Earth is difficult.
More difficult will be to detect life forms,
especially if they were just bacteria.
Extraterrestrial Life
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Extraterrestrial Life
To find life forms in a planet we must analyze its
atmosphere and detect a chemical disequilibrium,
because life changes its environment:
When life originated on Earth, bacteria
produced an overabundance of methane;
When new organisms evolved and produced
oxygen, the methane decreased and
the oxygen increased.
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Extraterrestrial Life
The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected water and methane on the
atmospheres of the Jupiter-sized exoplanet HD 189733b. However, current
technology is not sufficient to analyze the atmospheres of smaller planets.
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Thank you for your time
Referenceshttp://www.scienceinschool.org/2009/issue13/corothttp://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/COROThttp://www.scienceinschool.org/repository/images/issue2exoplanet3_large.jpghttp://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/image/151http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_189733_b