This planet is a gas giant known as a hot Jupiter
Credit to NASA/JPL-Caltech
Exoplanet's Amazing Wonders
You Never Know What or How You'll Find the Unknown in Infinite Space
By Amsi Ramirez
Exoplanets are amazing, beautiful, mysterious, creepy and dangerous. All in all, they are something to be discovered and relished from down here on Earth. Did you know there are planets that are practically dead, have glass rain and are hotter than the surface of our sun and how were they found?
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Katy Mersmann, Kristen Walbolt and Thalia Rivera work at JPL(Jet Propulsion Laboratory) , and Lindsay E. Hays formerly worked at JPL. Exoplanets are planets that are outside of our solar system. NASA has discovered exoplanets in space since 1995 and will keep finding more. They look for more planets that are habitable by comparing them with Earth and there is more than one way to find them.
“It’s about different exoplanets that are scary, weird and strange, and they really exist, “ Rivera said “ and I had a really fun time bringing the science of exoplanets to life through that poster series.“
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The poster series Galaxy of Horrors is about planets that are unique in their own frightening way. None of those planets, for sure, are habitable!
“There are some planets where the wind might blow the same elements that create rubies and sapphires, jewels here on Earth,“ Walbolt said, “that those jewels can be in the winds of some planets.” You certainly would never expect jems to ride the wind here on Earth.
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Even though it must be very tempting to go there, we can’t reach the place with the technology we have now, and we might never in a million years.
“We’ll never be able to go to an exoplanet.” Rivera said.
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Then, even though we know we can’t go to one, why do we look and study them? Well, we are trying to find planets with life.
​“If we want to someday explore other planets to find other planets, “ Mersmann said “ the only knowledge we have about what makes a planet safe to live on comes from Earth.“
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We have to study our planet and others to know if life can survive on another planet. For example, when studying Mars, samples were taken and sent back to Earth to study. It’s a delicate process to make sure nothing gets dirty, and it is also expensive.
“All of the different concepts involved in all of that, all of the different aspects of life and understanding life that’s involved in that with some of the neatest stuff that I’ve worked on.” Is what Hays said when she talked about the Mars Sample Return project she did in the past.
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Finding and exploring planets with robots, inside or outside our solar system, must be pretty interesting and fun in its own way. There are still many breathtaking and bizarre planets to be discovered, report and investigate.
“So we know that Earth has water on it, and that’s really important for life, so when we look at other planets or other moons, we look for water or ice water as a possible chance that that might be a place where life could grow," Mersmann said, "But we don’t know for sure, at all, but that’s a good starting point.“
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“So we have something that we call ECLSS, which is Environment Control and Life Support Systems.“ said Hays.
Walbolt said that so far there are 4171 exoplanets discovered, but that number changes every week. Some planets stand out more than others because of their unique features and sometimes it’s a whole planetary system that is unique.
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Walbolt said, “ There are worlds that are covered with global oceans of lava and some of them have sparkling skies because they have silica in their atmosphere that is reflecting lava below.“
Interviewees
Kristen Walbolt
Credit: Kristen Walbolt
Lindsay E. Hays
Credit: Lindsay E. Hays
Katy Mersmann
Credit: Katy Mersmann
Thalia Rivera
Credit: Thalia Rivera
I wonder if the sparkling skies look like glitter raining down and if the lava dries up in some spot, just like here on Earth. There are so many ‘ what ifs ’ when it comes to exoplanets. Maybe someday, and if already possible, sometime, we can see pictures of those planets.
On the planet called TrEs-2b, it is pitch black, with a deep red glow and an atmosphere scorching like lava. Some scientists say the deep glow comes from the flaming hot air. People already can’t stand the summer heat here in the south, how are we going to survive that?! In fact, we can’t!
In this solar system, the star is a bright red, and it has a particular planet in it:TRAPPIST-1b. TRAPPIST-1b is a planet that does not rotate, one side is always facing the sun, while the other side is dark and looks at the six planets behind it. This planet’s color resembles a teal blue and the other six planets look like red moons because their star is really bright. It’s likely it is always a full moon planet over there, because if one isn’t, surely another is.
Image of TRAPPIST-1b
Credit to NASA Exoplanet Exploration
On this planet the whole entire place looks like lava ground, it is really stunning and it’s called KOI-55 b. That planet used to be close to the size of Jupiter, but now it’s smaller than Earth because it was inside of its star for a while, and luckily survived. It will die eventually because it will soon be completely vaporized.
Image of KOI-55b
Credit to NASA Exoplanet Exploration
All these planets are amazing, and there are many more. Here are some ways that we found them.
“So they're space crafts, but they’re really small, they’re like the size of a cereal box, and there's one called ASTERIA, and that one has actually been looking at different exoplanets.“ said Rivera.
ASTERIA is one of the projects that are in the category of CubeSats. CubeSats are small satellites called nanosatellites.
Image of ASTERIA
Credit to JPL
“It’s really impressive because usually we send these million-dollar telescopes out into space and we use them to look at planets, but being able to do that at a smaller scale with less funding is really, really impressive.” said Rivera.
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One of the most effective ways NASA finds planets is through a method called Transit. It works by looking for its shadow. When the planet moves in front of its star, it weakens the star’s light and it leaves a shadow that an observer, a machine that watches over the star, detects. It has found 3170 planets so far. I’d say it’s a very easy way to find exoplanets, before I knew this, I thought it was more difficult.
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If you want to find out more about exoplanets and how they are found go to https://exoplanets.nasa.gov and go to https://www.jpl.nasa.gov to find out more about the robots. Exoplanets truly are space’s wonders.