Detecting New Planets

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Over the past decade scientists have discovered hundreds of new planets, some of which are habitable like earth. There are two methods that scientists use to discover these planets. The first method is called the Photometric Transit or “wink” method. This method relies mainly on a planets orbit across the disc of its parent star in our line of sight. The other method, which is what most scientist use, is referred to as the wobble method. Through this method, we predict the presence of planets by the effect they have on the star they orbit.
Planets outside of our solar system are called exo planets. Most exo planets are found using the wobble method. In this method scientist are looking for stars that appear to wobble because of the gravitational pull of their orbiting planets. This is an indirect method where the planets existence is inferred due to the offset or unbalance of the star they are revolving around. By using the Doppler effect, we can tell if a star has a planet revolving around it by looking at its spectrum. If the spectrum fluctuates continuously from high to low f...

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