I wish I'd read that book by that wheelchair guy.

[davywavy]

As part of my current drive to do more interesting things, last night I headed off to the Institute Cervantes (the Spanish cultural office) for a lecture on the search for habitable extrasolar planets given by Alvaro Gimenez, head of policy for the European Space Agency and all round smart egg. I took to Alvaro immediately; he's that sort of cheerfully enthusiastic scientist who finds what he does so incredibly cool (and, let's face it, looking for possible alien life with a huge array of complicated machines that make impressive wom wom wom noises is cool) and is very happy and cheerful to share it with others. The only downside was that the lecture was in Spanish and the simultaneous translation service was so poor I had real difficulty following what was being said, and at one point almost dozed off. I guess the translator was a physics student, as phrases like "High energy particles" tripped merrily off his tongue, but basic language didn't; instead we got unfinished sentences and gaps followed by rushed speech as he struggled to catch up again. It was very frustrating.
Fortunately it was a lecture open to the public and so it didn't cover much I didn't already know. However, in the section on finding and identifying extrasolar planets I hit something I really couldn't follow, and I was wondering if any of you clever lot out there can help?
I got that we can locate planets by the doppler shift in their sun caused by gravity, and that we can learn the size of the planet by measuring the drop in light as the planet passes in front of it; however, there was something we can learn as the planet passes behind it's star and the translation was so poor I just coulnd't figure out what. I think it was something to do with temperature, but I'm flummoxed. Any of you astrophysics types got any ideas?

Comments

[rgljr69.livejournal.com]

I have no solid data, just hazarding a guess.

But . . . it seems I remember something to the effect that we can guage the distance of a planet or moon based on the time it takes to orbit the sun or planet respectively.

*shrug*

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, orbital period is mass-independent.