COROT launched!!!!!!

[imaplanck.]

Has anyone here noticed the european effort to explore non-gasgiant exoplanets was lauched earlier this week. Im most intrigued myself. Although as always the first data wont be gathered until a few months of pissing about.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16368147/

[Nickelodeon]

pissing about?

[imaplanck.]

Urine procrastination.

[orcot]

It can only detect planets 2 times the size of earth. So only supper masive earth, I wonder if it also capable to detect trojans asteroids.

Do you think that its possible that there are planets out there that somehow resemble The ice giants that are partially rock and partialy water ice they should be bigger then regular planets but still keep a earthlike graivty, with a Titan like atmosphere of more then 1 bar so there is less difference in surface temprature then on earth. If so then the Co2 in the atmosphere could warm the planet until the surface starts to melt so it can absorb the co2 to keep it yust at freezing levels all the time, underneeth their would be a liquid ocean because of the pressure....
Yeah well okay long shot 2 times the size of the earth is at least 5 times it mass. So the worlds that are going to be discovered are proberly going to be boring (or double planets). However before we could only detect gas giants and there the change on live is absolutley 0. I love it that it's going to be able to search for a category planets that aren't present in our own solar system and that the next future telescope is already far on the drawing bord. The only draw back is that it proberly isn't capable to make hubble like pictures so the mission will miss quit a bit of publisity like the venus express.

[imaplanck.]

Indeed many things were achieved up until now reguarding planet detetection, that was way beyond the expected though, so who knows!
I agree though, detecting earthlike plants will be for future missions like the space interferometer, but I find any progress in the planet hunting field far more intresting than the many costly white-elephant type manned missions of the past 3 decades.

[Billy T]

I wonder if it also capable to detect trojans asteroids....

I do not know but bet they (except for the sand grain and smaller ones) would be "blindingly bright" - I.e. saturate the detectors while accidently looked at.

Look at question this way: The trojans are small in cross section compared to Earth and perhaps only reflect 0.2 of light falling on them from the sun, but the lightyears distant "Earth like" planet is doing the same (roughly) and in (roughly) the same intensity of radiation from its star (sun).

I do not remember the distance to L1, but it is much less than 1 AU. Lets call it "d" and the distance to the "earth like" planet is "D." Thus (roughly) the ratio of the "just detectable" trojan diameter to the diameter of the distant, "just detectable" "earth like" planet is d/D and that is one hell of a small number. (Note the squares in spreading of light with distance and light intercept cross sections were not forgotten, but cancel)

Being lazy, I will leave it to others to estimate, but I would not be surprized to learn a grain of sand is easily detectable at L1, but the sun itself would be blinding, if the orbit of Corot can not have "night sky" (instead of sun) as the sand grain's background. I.e. I hope Corot's orbit (from sun's POV) is more than half a degree from earth as it goes over the Earth's poles.

BTW, there is some serious consideration of populating L1 with many modest reflective ballons or disks to fight "global warming" but I bet doing same on high mountains etc is much cheaper. (might even save the alpine glaciers etc.)

[orcot]

a single trojan (asteroids) would indeed be difficult to track, I was thinking more of a cluster 5 to 30 times the size of the earth that is filled for something like 1 % with asteroids that are larger then 500 meters and abouth 5-10% with dustgrains. It's by far larger then any planet but a whole lot more transparant. The max mass of the cloud could be estimated because the objects would be so close together that if they where to heavy they would colide into a single body.

PS what do you think of Ganymedes like planets that are partially water ice could they be big enof to detect and have a resenable gravity (nothing biger then a 120%).

[orcot]

Or perhaps double planets that are at least venus like in mass and orbit so close that at times they form a optical illusion ellipse planet big enof for detection.

[imaplanck.]

PS what do you think of Ganymedes like planets that are partially water ice could they be big enof to detect and have a resenable gravity (nothing biger then a 120&#37.

Interesting thought. It would almost certainy be able to detect planets of that size and mass but it would far too close to the star(the closer the planet, the more light it disrupts from the star), so that would present an obvious temperature problem for ice.


http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0612/27corot/

Many of the planets COROT will detect are expected to be 'hot Jupiters', gaseous worlds. An unknown percentage of those detected are expected to be rocky planets, maybe just a few times larger than the Earth (or smaller, even). If COROT finds such planets, they will constitute a new class of planet altogether.

The obviously grail is to find a planet small enough yet far enough away from the star to be hospitable to possible life, the key being that only future mission will be able to detect terrestrial planets in the habitable zone.

[orcot]

yes unfortunally it's the present now. In anyway even with the next generation of telescope it will be hard to get a clear picture. But then again with the ever evolving computer animations who cares it will be fun to look at the art pictures of supossed exoplanets now, I see the image evolve in years to come. While right now we could see how many more planets there are out there.

[orcot]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ot_planet.html
so corot brought in it's first picture and now it would seem that it could be capable to detect earth sized body's and do a chemical composition check of it.