NASA Missions Extended

 

Artists conception of Spitzer, Planck and Kepler (left to right)

Astronomers received some great news a few days ago. Three major space telescopes, Kepler, Spitzer and Planck, have had their missions extended! This is great news, as astronomers will obtain more data and hopefully make some big discoveries! But what can we do with these telescopes?

The Kepler Space Telescope is an optical telescope has been actively searching for exoplanets. It looks at the same region of the sky 24/7, and measures the brightness of 150,000+ stars. If one of them dims for a short period of time, it might be due to a planet crossing in front of the star and blocking the light. Kepler has already found over 2000 potential exoplanets in the last 2.5 years of operation, and it's funding has been extended until 2016

The Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared telescope that has been operating since 2004. For the telescope's detector to work properly, it needs to be kept extremely cold. Unfortunately, the cryogenics which keep it cool have run out, but the detector still functions, and some science can be done with the telescope. Astronomers have used Spitzer to look at young stars, distant galaxies, and many other objects that are "hidden" behind giant clouds of gas.  It will continue to operate for another two years.

Planck is a jointly funded NASA and ESA telescope which has been operational for about three years. It's a space based microwave/radio telescope whose main purpose is the study the cosmic microwave background. This is the first light emitted by the universe after the Big Bang. It will help us understand how the universe began by observing it right after it was born. Astronomers also use Planck to study distant galaxies, and objects in our solar system.

Image Credit:  NASA/JPL-Caltech

The First Tatooine!

Anyone who has seen Star Wars remembers Tatooine, the home of Luke and Anakin Skywalker. Astronomers have found a real Tatooine! Well, they have found a planet with two suns at least. It's probably nothing like how George Lucas portrayed it though. 

Kepler 16-b is the first circumbinary planet ever discovered. It was first observed by the Kepler Space telescope on July 7th, 2011. The planet orbits a binary star system (Kepler-16) where one star is 70% the mass of the sun and the other is about 25%. In the system, the two stars orbit around each other, and the planet has an orbit surrounding the both of them . The planet is believed to be half rock and half gas,  roughly the size of Saturn, and orbits the stars in about 228 days. An interesting point of the discovery is that the three objects all orbit in the same plane. It's as if the stars and planets are balls on a table, orbiting each other but sitting on an imaginary flat surface. This supports the theory that this planet formed from a circumbinary disk; a disk of gas and dust that surrounded the binary star system as they were forming. Until now, astronomers weren't sure that the conditions were stable enough around a binary star system for a planet to form. The discovery of Kepler 16-b will help astronomers improve their star formation models, and maybe we will find more circumbinary planets in the future!

Image Credit: NASA