Worlds Beyond Our Own: The Search for Habitable Planets (Astronomers' Universe)
Sujan Sengupta
Language: English
Pages: 154
ISBN: 3319098934
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This is a book on planets: Solar system planets and dwarf planets. And planets outside our solar system – exoplanets. How did they form? What types of planets are there and what do they have in common? How do they differ? What do we know about their atmospheres – if they have one? What are the conditions for life and on which planets may they be met? And what’s the origin of life on Earth and how did it form? You will understand how rare the solar system, the Earth and hence life is.
This is also a book on stars. The first and second generation of stars in the Universe. But in particular also on the link between planets and stars – brown dwarfs. Their atmospheric properties and similarities with giant exoplanets.
All these fascinating questions will be answered in a non-technical manner. But those of you who want to know a bit more may look up the relevant mathematical relationships in appendices.
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Cosmic Collisions: The Hubble Atlas of Merging Galaxies
causes the Moon to rotate synchronously around its own axis such that the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. Before the Moon’s rotation was synchronized, it was rotating faster but slowed down by the Earth. On the other hand, the Earth’s rotation is being slowed down by the Moon. However, because the Earth’s gravitational force is much greater than that of the Moon, the rotation of the Moon slowed down much rapidly. Ultimately, the spin rotation period of the Moon was slowed down to a
object in the Kuiper Belt. Subsequently, several objects including the recently discovered dwarf planets Eris, Makemake, etc. were detected in this region. Similarly, Sedna was also thought to be a unique object in the inner Oort cloud. But very recently a sibling of Sedna in this extended family of the solar system was found which clearly suggests that these are a new group of planetary mass objects. This object, another probable dwarf planet, has even larger orbit and is located beyond Sedna.
system is about 6.5 light years away from the Sun. Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B are the closest Brown Dwarfs to us. It is suspected that this binary Brown Dwarf system has a planetary mass object as a third component. Most of the matter inside a Brown Dwarf is in boiling state. Above this boiling or convective region, there exists a thin atmosphere. The atmosphere of a Brown Dwarf is sufficiently cool for different molecules to form out of different atoms. Brown Dwarfs are very dense as well. Their
objects. It may lie either inside one of the objects or outside both of the objects. If the objects have the same mass, then the center of mass or the barycenter is located exactly at the middle of the line joining the centers of them. Now, if the mass of one of the objects is increased, the center of mass will shift towards the center of this heavier object. Thus, if the mass of the secondary is very less as compared to the mass of the primary, the center of mass around which both the objects
day side of the planet is faced 80 5 Discovery of Extra-Solar Planets towards the observer, the planet is blocked by the star and hence no polarization can be detected. The amount of polarization observed should be the maximum when half of the planetary surface is illuminated by the starlight. Therefore, the amount of polarization of the reflected light should increase from zero to a maximum value and then reduces to zero during one orbital period. This will repeat according to the orbital
