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The new Kepler telescope is designed to detect planets that transit in front of their stars, however this only works for about .5% of stars that are on the correct plane for viewing. For detecting planets that are on different planes, perhaps background stars could be used?
First, remove the target
star from the data, then watch the background stars for recurring light-dips, indicating a planet.
This will probably need a whole new telescope, I'm not sure Kepler could handle it.
"Methods of detecting extrasolar planets" at WIkipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia..._extrasolar_planets
While difficult, direct imaging isn't impossible. (And apparently background stars can be used to detect foreground planets - via lensing) [phoenix, Jun 05 2009]
How to identify the regular pattern of a norbit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbit
Sorry. [phoenix, Jun 05 2009]
[link]
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I'm not sure and I'm just guessing, but I don't think it
would work. (a) The planet's own sun offers a far, far
bigger target disc than distant stars, so the chances of the
planet occulting another star might be small (?) (b) I don't
think you could digitally process out the overwhelming
brightness of the planet's own sun and still see very small
changes in brightness of "adjacent" stars. This, after all, is
why it is so hard to see the planets directly (ie, you can't
subtract out the star's own light without losing the
planet). (c) all stars move relative to one another, and
also a planet's orbit will precess; I would imagine this
means that the planet will not occlude the same
'background star' repeatedly, and it will be very hard to
identify the regular pattern of a norbit. |
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