27th Annual Student Research Conference
Habitable Earth-sized Planet Detection
James M. Tate
Dr. Vayujeet Gokhale, Faculty Mentor
Until recently we did not have the technology to explore Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone. However the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the space based telescope Kepler in 2009 to detect planets using the planetary transit method. This is the process of a planet passing in front of its parent star from the observer's perspective. By observing the characteristics of the parent star and the planets transit, many of the properties of the planet can be determined, like the orbital period, orbital size, planetary size and temperature. Using these properties, the planet could be found to be habitable or not. The focus of this research is on the process of collecting and evaluating the observations made by the Kepler Telescope.
Keywords: Planetary transit, Planetary systems, Binaries, Telescopes, Photometry, Photometric
Topic(s):Astronomy
Physics-Astronomy
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 302-2
Location: MG 1096
Time: 1:15