Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: UNAWE Space Scoop – The Missing Tatooines Out There
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : http://365daysofastronomy.org/ ; https://www.spacescoop.org/en/scoops/2112/the-missing-tatooines-out-there/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you surely remember the amazing view of double sunrises and sunsets on Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet.
Well, in the real Universe, Earth-sized planets may be much more common than we think! And like Tatooine, a lot of them might be among two star systems, called binary systems. Astronomers recently found that we are missing a lot of these distant worlds. We can’t find them.
But now, with the maps provided by the high-energy jets coming out of black holes, the task can be a little easier.
Bio: Richard Drumm is President of the Charlottesville Astronomical Society and President of 3D – Drumm Digital Design, a video production company with clients such as Kodak, Xerox and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. He was an observer with the UVa Parallax Program at McCormick Observatory in 1981 & 1982. He has found that his greatest passion in life is public outreach astronomy and he pursues it at every opportunity.
Today’s sponsor: Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month: David Bowes, Dustin A Ruoff, Brett Duane, Kim Hay, Nik Whitehead, Timo Sievänen, Michael Freedman, Paul Fischer, Rani Bush, Karl Bewley, Joko Danar, Steven Emert, Frank Tippin, Steven Jansen, Barbara Geier, Don Swartwout, James K. Wood, Katrina Ince, Michael Lewinger, Phyllis Simon Foster, Nicolo DePierro, Tim Smith, Frank Frankovic, Steve Nerlich, Zoe and Lea, Benett Bolek, Michel, Marry Ann.
Please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.
Or please visit our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy
Transcript:
This is the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is…
The Missing Tatooines Out There
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you surely remember the amazing view of double sunrises and sunsets on Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet.
Well, in the real Universe, Earth-sized planets may be much more common than we think! And like Tatooine, a lot of them might be among two star systems, called binary systems.
Astronomers recently found that we are missing a lot of these distant worlds. We can’t find them.
As at least half of all stars in the Universe are combined in binary systems, they could be, in a funny way, hiding plenty of planets we’re not aware of.
And there’s a good reason for it. Planets in binary systems are quite difficult to spot.
One of the planet-finding techniques astronomers most commonly use is called the transit method. It measures the drop in light as a planet passes in front of, or transits, its star. The drop in brightness is called transit depth.
If you have a second star orbiting around, the change in brightness in the first star as it’s transited by its planet, will be a lot harder to see. The signal you want to detect is quite literally diluted by the light from the other star.
The signal you’re looking for is sort of lost in the sauce.
The astronomers note that in exoplanet systems containing binary host stars, there is an observational bias against detecting Earth-size planet transits due to that transit depth dilution caused by the companion star.
NASA’s TESS mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, has found 131 exoplanets so far. And over 4,000 additional candidate detections are being studied to confirm that they’re exoplanets.
But what if there are more, but we can’t detect them?
With that question in mind, a team of astronomers from NASA’s Ames Research Center used the twin telescopes of the Gemini Observatory to look at the TESS so-called “objects of interest” with better resolution.
Guess what they found?
A lot of stars that look like a single star are actually binary systems!
After finding that out, the team compared the sizes of planets that normally orbit a single star to those that orbit binary systems.
While single stars have planets of different sizes around them, they could only detect large planets orbiting in binary systems.
This is why astronomers think there are a lot of Earth-sized planets around binary stars that we just have not been able to detect yet.
These transits are suffering from transit depth dilution. The smaller exoplanets have shallow transit depths that are being flooded by light from the other star, making them hard to detect.
They’re likely there, it’s just that we can’t detect them.
Another interesting finding from this study is that binary stars that are close to one another are less likely to host planets than those that are farther apart.
Maybe planets don’t form around stars that are too close to their stellar neighbors.
To confirm the findings, astronomers will need to do more studies using different techniques.
But this is definitely a great step to understand how planets like Tatooine might be born and evolve in real life!
Though if you remember the scene in the movie where we see the two stars, they’re similarly sized in the sky.
So they’re not separated by much distance in the system, and unlikely to have planets of any size, large or small.
Oh well, let’s chalk it up to creative license!
Hey, here’s a cool fact!
In Greek mythology the constellation of Gemini is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux. So naturally, the Gemini Observatory has twin telescopes.
Gemini North is located in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and is 4,200 meters above sea level — almost half the altitude of Mount Everest!
Gemini South is located in Cerro Pachón, in the Chilean Andes, at about 2,700 meters high. Together, both telescopes can cover almost the entire sky!
The astronomers in today’s episode used two identical imaging instruments on the two identical telescopes to do the study.
The Hawaiian instrument is called `Alopeke and the Chilean instrument is called Zorro. Both names mean “fox” in the local language!
Cool!
Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post-production by Richard Drumm. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes.
This show is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you! Please consider supporting to our show on Patreon.com/365DaysofAstronomy and get access to bonus content.
After 10 years, the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is entering its second decade of sharing important milestone in space exploration and astronomy discoveries. Join us and share your story. Until tomorrow! Goodbye!