NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds (Tommy Maldonado)

Current Event Report:

Tommy Maldonado

 NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds

I recently read an interesting article concerning the planets in other solar systems. The article was called, NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds, and it not only amazed me, but also somewhat bemused me. It bemused me for there was an enigmatic factor of scientists studying planets outside of our solar system, and I believe that many people in our society can agree upon that.

Scientists of a newly found organization called Open Source Differential Photometry Code for Amateur Astronomy Research (OSCAAR) have one main goal right now: to discover and study planets outside our solar system. These astronomers have studied the universe and all of its contents carefully. They have gained much information and data from various places, such as NASA’s Kepler Mission. After much studying they have reason to believe that there are thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy alone, and they can prove it.

As many people know, a solar system is comprised of a star and many of planets orbiting around it. When a planet passes in between Earth and the sun, it is called a transit. Although not mentioned in the article, this occurred not too long ago, where observers from Earth witnessed the transit of Venus. While it was not very exciting occasion and many people in ours society did not bother to watch it, since it was just a black spot moving across the sun, it was still an exceptional phenomenon that only happens every so often. While observers on Earth were literally able to see a small black dot moving across the sun, from far away, the event is not nearly as vivid.

As scientists from OSCAAR gazed out upon the stars, using the NASA’s Kepler Mission, they noticed that certain stars became fainter at some points in time. While the difference in apparent magnitude was only very slight, it was still a change. This can be interpreted in various ways, and most definitely wouldn’t be noticed at all by the average person, however the most reasonable explanation is that astronomers are witnessing a transit occurring as a planet orbits around its star.Although the star are very far away, astronomers believe the exoplanets to be “hot-Jupiters” that are orbiting around there star relatively fast. 

While this article is not very relative to the omnipresent bubble that practically all members of society are living in, can still be understood by the majority people. While it does require some open-minded thinking in terms of things that are not in our solar system, there are some connections that can easily be made. For example, the transit of Venus that occurred just recently is very similar to the entire theory that this article is based off. Also, what this article is saying could possibly be a great breakthrough in the entire scientific understanding of space. For instance, while this is just a very small piece of the puzzle, it could lead to us learning different planets in various solar systems within the Milky Way.

            I believe this article was amazing. It was well-written and pretty easy to understand. However, it could have provided some more background information about OSCAAR and the missions used to see the transits. Also, the article magnanimously offered outstanding information that I did not know prior to reading it. For example, I had no idea that astronomers were able to detect such a small difference in light when a planet transits its star. In conclusion, I thought this article was magnificent and I learned a lot from it.

Citation:

Neal-Jones, Nancy, and Bill Steigerwald. "NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur

Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds." NASA. NASA, 4 Sept. 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.