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At the moment, what the stars are made of is being investigated since it is suspected that these bodies host their own exoplanets.
(ZENIT News / Castelgandolfo-Vatican City, 03.21.2023).- Astronomers from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Vatican Observatory (VO) teamed up to spectroscopically survey more than 1000 bright stars which are suspected to host their own exoplanets. The team — which includes VO astronomers Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J., Fr. David Brown, S.J., and Fr. Chris Corbally, S.J., and VO engineer Michael Franz — now presents precise values of 54 spectroscopic parameters per star in the first of a series of papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and releases all its data to the scientific community. This unprecedented large number of parameters will be essential to interpreting the stellar light and finding connections between the properties of stars and their possible planets.
Stars tell stories about themselves, and sometimes about their undiscovered planets. Their language is light. Starlight reveals many physical properties of a star, such as its temperature, pressure, motion, chemical composition, and more.
Researchers analyze the light with a method called quantitative absorption spectroscopy. To do this, telescopes capture starlight and spectrographs break it down by wavelength into a rainbow-like spectrum which is the star’s fingerprint of light. When astronomers know these parameters precisely, they can use them to test their theoretical models of stars. This often reveals that the models have some shortcomings, or that observations of stellar spectra are still too imprecise.
But sometimes, it reveals that a star has a surprising story for astronomers. That is what motivated this team to carry out an ultra precise survey of possible planet-hosting stars. “Because stars and their planets form together, the question arose whether the existence of certain chemical elements in a stellar atmosphere, or their isotopic or abundance ratios, is indicative of a planetary system,” explains Prof. Klaus G. Strassmeier, lead author, director at AIP and principal investigator of the survey.
Continued below.
zenit.org
(ZENIT News / Castelgandolfo-Vatican City, 03.21.2023).- Astronomers from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Vatican Observatory (VO) teamed up to spectroscopically survey more than 1000 bright stars which are suspected to host their own exoplanets. The team — which includes VO astronomers Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J., Fr. David Brown, S.J., and Fr. Chris Corbally, S.J., and VO engineer Michael Franz — now presents precise values of 54 spectroscopic parameters per star in the first of a series of papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and releases all its data to the scientific community. This unprecedented large number of parameters will be essential to interpreting the stellar light and finding connections between the properties of stars and their possible planets.
Stars tell stories about themselves, and sometimes about their undiscovered planets. Their language is light. Starlight reveals many physical properties of a star, such as its temperature, pressure, motion, chemical composition, and more.
Researchers analyze the light with a method called quantitative absorption spectroscopy. To do this, telescopes capture starlight and spectrographs break it down by wavelength into a rainbow-like spectrum which is the star’s fingerprint of light. When astronomers know these parameters precisely, they can use them to test their theoretical models of stars. This often reveals that the models have some shortcomings, or that observations of stellar spectra are still too imprecise.
But sometimes, it reveals that a star has a surprising story for astronomers. That is what motivated this team to carry out an ultra precise survey of possible planet-hosting stars. “Because stars and their planets form together, the question arose whether the existence of certain chemical elements in a stellar atmosphere, or their isotopic or abundance ratios, is indicative of a planetary system,” explains Prof. Klaus G. Strassmeier, lead author, director at AIP and principal investigator of the survey.
Continued below.
Vatican telescope searches for new worlds: here's what it has found - ZENIT - English
At the moment, what the stars are made of is being investigated since it is suspected that these bodies host their own exoplanets.
zenit.org
