糖心原创

Tickets for the first show of the spring season at the William M Thomas Planetarium 鈥淢oon Base鈥� on February 19 are now available through the . The Mesmerica shows are sold through the .

Jupiter continues shining very brightly in the east in the evening among the stars of Gemini. To the right of Gemini is Orion with orange-red and blue-white at diagonally opposite ends. Following Orion鈥檚 Belt downward, you鈥檒l come to . Nearly overhead above Orion is Taurus with orange at its eye and the beautiful cluster, the , at its shoulder. Leo is now just beginning to rise in the evening, telling us that spring is coming soon. Blue-white is at the base of the backward question mark (the Sickle) that makes up the lion鈥檚 head and chest. At the other end of Leo is white-hot at the end of the lion鈥檚 tail. 

Low in the west, the ringed planet Saturn is visible below the Great Square part of Pegasus until about 8:15 or 8:20 p.m. In about two weeks, we鈥檒l begin to see Mercury and Venus low in the southwest just after sunset but you may need binoculars to pick them out from the twilight glow. On February 18 a very thin will be right next to Mercury. The moon will be so close to Mercury that those in the southeast part of the United States, Mexico, and most of Central America will see the moon cover up Mercury. 

The day before (February 17), the moon will be at New phase and lined up with the sun to make a . Unfortunately, the moon will be near the farthest part of its elliptical orbit around Earth, so it will be just an annular eclipse with about 93% of the sun鈥檚 surface blocked by the moon. Also, unfortunately, the .

Tonight, the moon is a waning gibbous rising a bit past midnight. It will be at Third (Last) Quarter phase the following night. Early risers on February 11 will see a fat waning crescent moon to the lower left of the orange-red heart of Scorpius, the supergiant star . The two will easily fit within the same field of view of your binoculars. Start looking low in the southeast at about 3:15 a.m.

Last week, orbiting at the edge of a nearby star鈥檚 .  The exoplanet is called 鈥淗D 137010 b鈥�. The HD comes from the of 225,300 stars over the entire sky with brightnesses brighter than ninth magnitude. The catalog was created over a century ago. HD 137010 b orbits its star in 355 days. The star is about 1000 degrees cooler than the sun, so the exoplanet is at the outer edge of the habitable zone, making it be Mars-cold.

The exoplanet is part of the database of stars observed by the now-defunct that found thousands of exoplanets using the . If an exoplanet鈥檚 orbit is aligned edge-on with respect to us, we can see the exoplanet cross in front of鈥攖ransit鈥攖he star, slightly dimming the star light. The bigger the exoplanet, the more starlight that is blocked. The closer the exoplanet orbits to the star, the more frequent are the transits.

HD 137010 b was discovered by a 鈥渃itizen-science鈥� project called 鈥�. Volunteers analyze data from the Kepler and the . With over half a million stars to examine, we need all the help we can get! The exoplanets discovered by the computer algorithms use multiple transits to hone in on the precise orbital characteristics. HD 137010 b has had just one transit that we鈥檝e observed, so it鈥檚 technically a candidate exoplanet and its orbit parameters are a bit fuzzy. There鈥檚 a 40% chance that it could actually orbit closer to its star and be more comfortable than the current estimate. 

Although Kepler did find some rocky Earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zones of warm Sun-like stars, HD 137010 b is the first one that orbits a star close enough to us (and therefore, bright enough) for substantial follow-up observations鈥攐bservations that could reveal atmospheres and whether life has altered the atmosphere, i.e., clear . It will definitely be a target for the on the island of La Palma and the that is going to launch in about a year.

PLATO is short for 鈥淧LAnetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars鈥� (okay, drop the 鈥淪鈥� because there can be only one PLATO). While Kepler and TESS have been able to find small rocky worlds, they鈥檝e been in close orbits around much cooler stars. They haven鈥檛 been able to easily find true Earth twins. PLATO will be able to do that, so we鈥檒l soon know for sure how common or rare it is for Earth-size planets to orbit around warm sun-like stars.

鈥�

Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at 糖心原创

Author of the award-winning website