Astronomers searched an Earth sized 'Pi planet' with a 3.14 day orbit.
In a delightful alignment of astronomy and mathematics, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have searched a '' PI Earth'' - a planet that is the size of the Earth that remind the universal mathematics orbit around its star every 3.14 days it gives.
The researchers discovered signs of the planet in data taken in the year 2017 by the K2 mission of the NASA Kepler space telescope. By zeroing in the system earlier this year with SPECULOOS, a network of ground based telescopes, the team confirmed that the signals were orbiting a planet. And in fact, the planet is still orbiting its star today, with a period of pi every 3.14 days.
A graduate student of MIT's department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary science ( EAPS ), Prajwal Niraula says that, '' the planet moves like a clock'', he is the lead author of a paper published today in the journal Astronomy, titled; ''Earth Clock; A 3.14 day Earth - shaped planet from K2's kitchen saved warm by SPECULOOS team.
''Every person need a bit of fun these days,'' said by the co-author Julien-de-Wit, of both the paper title and the Pi planet itself.
PLANET EXTRACTION
The new planet has been found K2-315b; This is the 315th planetary system discovered within the K2 data - just one system shy of an even more serious place on the list.
The Researchers estimate that K2-315b has the radius as same as Earth 0.95, making it size of Earth. It orbits a quiet, low- mass star that is about one-fifth the size of the Sun. The planet orbits its star every 3.14 days, at a speed of 81 kilometers per seconds, or about 181,000 mph.
Although its mass remains to be determined, scientists suspects that K2-315b is terrestrial like the Earth. But the Pi planet is probably not habitable, because its tight orbits brings its surface close to its star to fully warm up to 450 Kelvin or 350 degrees Fahrenheit - prefect, as it is for baking a real pie.
Prajwal Niraula says that,'' it would be too hot to be habitable in the common sense of the phrase.'' He differs from his associations with the excitation, mathematically constant Pi around this particular planet, in that it is a promising candidate for the study of the characteristics of its environment can be proved.
The assistant professor of EAPS Julien-de-Wit, who is also a member of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research said that, ''We now know we can mine and extract planets from archival data, and hopefully there will be no planet left behind, especially these really important ones that have a high impact.''
DIPS IN THE DATA
The researchers are the members of SPECULOOS, an acronym for the search for habitable planets eclipsing ultra cool stars, and named for a network of four 1-meter Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, which scan the sky across the southern hemisphere. most recently, the network added a 5th telescope, which is the first to be located in the northern hemisphere, named Artemis - a project that was spearheaded by the researchers at MIT.
The SPECULOOS telescope are designed to search and found the planet which are near to Earth and are Earth like planet, ultracool dwarfs-small, dim stars that offer astronomers a better chance of spotting an orbiting planet and characterizing its atmosphere, as these stars lack the shine of much larger, brighter stars.
'' These ultracool dwarfs are outspreaded all across the sky,'' Burdanov says. '' aimed ground based surveys like SPECULOOS are helpful because we can look at these ultracool dwarf one by one.''
In particular, astronomers look at individual stars for signs of transit, or periodically dip into the light of a star, which indicates the crossing of a possible planet in front of the star, and abbreviated blocking its light.
Earlier this year, Prajwal Niraula came upon a quiet dwarf, which was slightly warmer than the commonly accepted range for an ultracool dwarf in data collected by the K2 campaign - the Kepler space telescope's second observing mission, which monitored slivers of the spacecraft orbited around the Sun.
Over the course of several months in 2017, the Kepler telescope observed a portion of the sky, including the cool dwarf, labeled as epic 249631677 in the K2 data. During this period Prajwal Niraula combed and about 20 dips were found in the light of this Stars, which appeared to be so repeat every 3.14 days.
The team analyzed the sign, tested various possible astrological scenarios to their origin, and confirmed that the sign were likely a transit planet, not the product of some other phenomenon such as a binary system of t wo spiral stars.
The researchers then planned to get to know the stars and its orbiting planet closely together with SPECULOOS. But first, they had to identify a window they would be sure to catch a transit.
''The forecast was developed to predict when a transit might occur next time,'' says Rackam,'' it's a little difficult to get down on the best night to follow from the ground. ''Even when you look at this 3.14 day signal in the K2 data, there is an uncertainty to it, which connects with every class.''
Researchers say the new PI planet may promise to come up with the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) to see detail of the atmosphere of planet. For now, the team is looking through other datasets such as those tess mission coming from NASA, and looking at the sign of Artemis as well as the rest of the SPECULOOS network for sign of Earthlike planets.
Prajwal Niraula said that, '' there will be more interesting Planets in the upcoming future, for JWST, a telescope designed to examine the atmosphere of these alien worlds,'' he also said that, '' with better algorithms, hopefully one day, we can find smaller planets, even smaller ones like Mars.''
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