Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Popular Physics
2011-06-30 v2 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Physics Education
Abstract
The field of extrasolar planets is still, in comparison with other astrophysical topics, in its infancy. There have been about 300 or so extrasolar planets detected and their detection has been accomplished by various different techniques. Here we present a simple laboratory experiment to show how planets are detected using the transit technique. Following the simple analysis procedure describe we are able to determine the planetary radius to be 1.27 +/- 0.20 R_{J} which, within errors agrees with the establish value of 1.32 +/- 0.25 R_{J}.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1103.5690,
title = {Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom},
author = {Samuel J. George},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.5690},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
7 pages, 2 figures, published in Physics Education