Astronomers Find Comets Orbiting a Star 800 Light-Years Away

In the past thirty years, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System. For the most part, they have been detected by the Kepler Space Telescope using a technique called Transit Photometry. For this method, astronomers measure periodic dips in a star’s brightness – which are the result of planets passing in front of them relative to an observer – to confirm the presence of planets.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Find Comets Orbiting a Star 800 Light-Years Away

In the past thirty years, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System. For the most part, they have been detected by the Kepler Space Telescope using a technique called Transit Photometry. For this method, astronomers measure periodic dips in a star’s brightness – which are the result of planets passing in front of them relative to an observer – to confirm the presence of planets.

more…

> Specifically, Jacobs was searching for signs of single transits, which are not like those that are caused by planets orbiting a star (i.e. periodic).

Mollwollfumble ditto.

I wonder if KIC 3542116 is one of the peculiar ones I found?

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Find Comets Orbiting a Star 800 Light-Years Away

In the past thirty years, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System. For the most part, they have been detected by the Kepler Space Telescope using a technique called Transit Photometry. For this method, astronomers measure periodic dips in a star’s brightness – which are the result of planets passing in front of them relative to an observer – to confirm the presence of planets.

more…

> Specifically, Jacobs was searching for signs of single transits, which are not like those that are caused by planets orbiting a star (i.e. periodic).

Mollwollfumble ditto.

I wonder if KIC 3542116 is one of the peculiar ones I found?

How would you know they were single transits unless you observed them for decades or longer, you could think it was a single transit but couldn’t it be a planet on an extremely long orbit and you just happened to observe it at the right time.

• How would you know they were single transits unless you observed them for decades or longer, you could think it was a single transit but couldn’t it be a planet on an extremely long orbit and you just happened to observe it at the right time.

Maybe the speed of the object?

• Maybe the speed of the object?

And the size too?

Both of these can be be determined by the amount and length of the dimming, I assume…

furious said:

• Maybe the speed of the object?

And the size too?

Both of these can be be determined by the amount and length of the dimming, I assume…

Going by the article it seems it was size and speed but you couldn’t assume something was a single transit due to long time periods of planetary orbits. Anyway exciting we can detect comets around other stars.

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Find Comets Orbiting a Star 800 Light-Years Away

In the past thirty years, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System. For the most part, they have been detected by the Kepler Space Telescope using a technique called Transit Photometry. For this method, astronomers measure periodic dips in a star’s brightness – which are the result of planets passing in front of them relative to an observer – to confirm the presence of planets.

more…

> Specifically, Jacobs was searching for signs of single transits, which are not like those that are caused by planets orbiting a star (i.e. periodic).

Mollwollfumble ditto.

I wonder if KIC 3542116 is one of the peculiar ones I found?

How would you know they were single transits unless you observed them for decades or longer, you could think it was a single transit but couldn’t it be a planet on an extremely long orbit and you just happened to observe it at the right time.

Because it disintegrated as it got closer to the star.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

> Specifically, Jacobs was searching for signs of single transits, which are not like those that are caused by planets orbiting a star (i.e. periodic).

Mollwollfumble ditto.

I wonder if KIC 3542116 is one of the peculiar ones I found?

How would you know they were single transits unless you observed them for decades or longer, you could think it was a single transit but couldn’t it be a planet on an extremely long orbit and you just happened to observe it at the right time.

Because it disintegrated as it got closer to the star.

That’s a good point, I wonder if they fully disintegrated or just lost a large amount of mass as most comets do that orbit our sun, would be hard to tell I imagine.

this bit from the article

This is the first time that Transit Photometry has been used to detect object as small as comets. These comets were balls of ice and dust – comparable in size to Halley’s Comet – that were found to be traveling at speeds of about 160,934 km/h (100,000 mph) before they vaporized. The researchers were able to detect them by picking out their tails, the clouds of dust and gas that form when comets get closer to their star and begin to sublimate.

and this bit from the article

As Rapport recalled, the process of interpreting the data was challenging, but rewarding. Initially, they noted that the lightcurves did not resemble those caused by planetary transits, which are characterized by a sudden and sharp drop in light, followed by a sharp rise. In time, Rapport noted the asymmetry in the three lightcurves resembled those of disintegrated planets, which they had observed before.

Tau.Neutrino said:

this bit from the article

This is the first time that Transit Photometry has been used to detect object as small as comets. These comets were balls of ice and dust – comparable in size to Halley’s Comet – that were found to be traveling at speeds of about 160,934 km/h (100,000 mph) before they vaporized. The researchers were able to detect them by picking out their tails, the clouds of dust and gas that form when comets get closer to their star and begin to sublimate.

and this bit from the article

As Rapport recalled, the process of interpreting the data was challenging, but rewarding. Initially, they noted that the lightcurves did not resemble those caused by planetary transits, which are characterized by a sudden and sharp drop in light, followed by a sharp rise. In time, Rapport noted the asymmetry in the three lightcurves resembled those of disintegrated planets, which they had observed before.

and this bit

“Then it occurred to me that, ‘Hey, these look like something we’ve seen before’… We thought, the only kind of body that could do the same thing and not repeat is one that probably gets destroyed in the end. The only thing that fits the bill, and has a small enough mass to get destroyed, is a comet.”

Nice one

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Find Comets Orbiting a Star 800 Light-Years Away

In the past thirty years, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System. For the most part, they have been detected by the Kepler Space Telescope using a technique called Transit Photometry. For this method, astronomers measure periodic dips in a star’s brightness – which are the result of planets passing in front of them relative to an observer – to confirm the presence of planets.

more…

> Specifically, Jacobs was searching for signs of single transits, which are not like those that are caused by planets orbiting a star (i.e. periodic).

Mollwollfumble ditto.

I wonder if KIC 3542116 is one of the peculiar ones I found?

How would you know they were single transits unless you observed them for decades or longer, you could think it was a single transit but couldn’t it be a planet on an extremely long orbit and you just happened to observe it at the right time.

Yes. That’s what I was looking for. Kepler’s time of operation pointing at a single location was so short that even Jupiter around our own Sun would only have shown up in a single transit.

KIC 3542116 is not one of my peculiar ones. But my two other peculiar ones could have been comet fragments rather than sunspots.

> That’s a good point, I wonder if they fully disintegrated or just lost a large amount of mass as most comets do that orbit our sun, would be hard to tell I imagine.

Actually, come to think of it, it would be perhaps easy to tell. Comets tend to break up in a well-known region around a star, so the combination of star mass and occultation duration would tell us whether it could be a comet or not.