PC Pals Forum

General Discussion => Science & Nature => Topic started by: sam on March 30, 2011, 02:18

Title: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: sam on March 30, 2011, 02:18

Bit of mindless self promotion here.. but I thought, Clive at the least, might be interested in this... I have had an article accepted for publication in the IoPs Physics Education journal:

Quote

The field of extrasolar planets is still, in comparison with other astrophysical topics, in its infancy. There have been about 300 or so extrasolar planets detected and their detection has been accomplished by various different techniques. Here we present a simple laboratory experiment to show how planets are detected using the transit technique. Following the simple analysis procedure describe we are able to determine the planetary radius to be 1.27 +/- 0.20 R_{J} which, within errors agrees with the establish value of 1.32 +/- 0.25 R_{J}.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5690

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: sam on March 30, 2011, 02:20

oh and if that scares you, one should look at the paper (I want to say seminal) on polarized source counts we just had accepted:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4228 

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: Clive on March 30, 2011, 09:34

Well done Sam!  Can I access them via Simbad? 

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: sam on March 30, 2011, 14:22

well eventually but simbad will just take you to those links anyway.

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: Clive on March 30, 2011, 18:47

I missed the .pdf links this morning but I have now downloaded and printed them out for future reading.  Thanks very much for those.  Makes a change from radial velocity papers.   :laugh:

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: Rik on March 30, 2011, 19:08

That only happens to sheets which are A1 or larger, Clive.  :o:

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: Clive on March 30, 2011, 19:39

Show off!   :devil:

Title: Re: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Post by: sam on March 31, 2011, 02:26

glad tis something different to the radial velocities!!