The telescope will point at a star, collecting its light and feeding it through an optical fiber that carries it into the spectrograph, which is housed in a specially built, thermally isolated clean room on the bottom floor of the observatory. The spectrometer operates on the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, and it belongs to a new class of radial velocity instruments that can achieve precision about three times better than ever before possible. Scientists will use that information to determine which planets are best suited for additional study by NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. An especially dense planet, for example, could have a rocky composition. Together, these size and mass measurements can be used to determine a planet's bulk density, which gives scientists insight into the planet's overall makeup. NEID will build upon TESS data by measuring the radial velocities of TESS-discovered planets. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have already identified thousands of exoplanets using the transit technique. Scientists can detect an exoplanet by hunting for periodic changes in the light of nearby stars, which occur when an orbiting planet crosses the star's face from our viewpoint. "When you know the size and the mass, that provides two fundamental parameters for these exoplanets."Ĭurrently, the transit technique is the main way scientists discover exoplanets and measure their relative sizes. "What's really critical for these planets is knowing their masses," said McElwain, an instrument scientist for the NEID development team. Radial velocities give astronomers a measurement of a planet's mass relative to its host star. This motion slightly alters the star's light. The instrument measures radial velocity, the shift in a star's motion caused by the gravitational tug of its planets. NEID was funded by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. That's because the Sun provides astronomers with their most detailed look at the kinds of changes that occur on the host stars of exoplanets, changes that may impact the detection and habitability of these alien worlds.Ī team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led by Michael McElwain, supported NEID's design, development, and commissioning. However, NEID will collect nearly as much data from the Sun during the day as it does from the stars at night. It began its search for exoplanets in earnest in June. The NEID spectrometer, which will help locate and characterize new worlds, observes the sky from Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Over the summer, a new tool called NEID (pronounced NOO-id) delivered its first batch of data on the nearest and best-studied star, our Sun.
As NASA expands its quest to discover exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system - it also grows its toolbox.
0 kommentar(er)
