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Could we automate the search. Look for portions of the sky where the planet covers a background star. Plot real and false positive data to see what could be the
by HocusPocusLocus 9y ago
Could we automate the search. Look for portions of the sky where the planet covers a background star. Plot real and false positive data to see what could be there, flying around.
Unless it orbits faster than Earth, it's periodic data too. If it does orbit the sun faster than Earth, outside Neptune's orbit, its really cruising!
- dtparr 9y agoFYI, Kepler's 3rd law (the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit) means it'll orbit very slowly (a planet just 100 au out would have nearly a 1000 Earth-year orbit).
- mabbo 9y agoThe problem is that it's a needle in a haystack. Everything in the sky can be thought of in terms of how many degrees or arcseconds wide it is. The moon and sun are nearly the same 'size' in these terms, even though the sun is so much bigger in actual size. This planet 9? It's ten times the size of the Earth (ish), but in terms of arcseconds, it's abysmally tiny. There simply aren't many telescopes powerful enough to see something that small in the sky. Worse, the smaller it is the more places in the sky you need to look to try to find it. It's like you've dropped a single 10nm transistor on your living room carpet.