Yay! Kepler Works!

Even though twitter was mostly down for the important announcement of the Kepler Mission, it did not dampen the excitement surrounding the update.
Kepler Works!
To prove it, the Kepler team produced a lightcurve of a previously known exoplanet, HAT-P-7 b, and found that Kepler's findings agree with previous observations of that planet. Oh, but there is so much more!
A cleaner light curve means that Kepler's data has less noise than those gathered by ground-based telescopes, which means more precision, and thus proves that Kepler is truly capable of detecting earth-sized worlds.
Most of all, Kepler's precision allowed the team to detect the atmosphere of a known gas giant planet. Based on the light curve, the trailing small dip corresponds to the occultation of HAT-P-7b--the part where the planet "hides" behind it's star. Taking this in consideration with the actual transit curve (the first major dip), the depth of the occultation and the shape and amplitude of the light curve show the planet has an atmosphere with a day-side temperature of about 4,310 degrees Fahrenheit. The occultation time compared to the main transit time also shows that the planet has a circular orbit.
All these bonus information is simply amazing! Not only does Kepler work, it works beautifully! Therefore, the Kepler Mission Team deserves a great commendation! And I'll drink to that! Yay! Kepler Works!

Links: Kepler Press Release

A Star for All Ages

In May of 2009, the discovery of a giant jupiter-like planet named VB 10b made headlines as the first planet discovered via the method called Astrometry. It is mentioned, but not given much emphasis that the the host star of VB 10b is the smallest star ever to be found harboring a planet. However, beneath this headline is an even more remarkable fact: VB 10 will outlive most stars in the universe.
Stars that small are very stingy with their energy production, they burn fuel ever so slowly. This is a striking contrast with the supergiant star Betelgeuse that used up most of it's fuel so quickly in a short time that it's now about to go nova.
Aside from being a long-lasting star in itself, VB 10b will actually use it's companion planet as an energy source in the future when VB10b tightens it's orbit and moves closer to it's sun. Yes, VB 10b is literally a "spare gas tank" for it's parent star. Greg Laughlin says, "The planet's gas will be a shot of fresh hydrogen to VB10 and should give it enough fuel to burn another 100 billion years -- basically forever."
And when we say forever, in this context it means close to the end of the universe, perhaps the last age of the cosmos where entropy has almost taken over, long after most other objects have faded into darkness.

Under The Frozen Sky

The past week, I've been watching bits of Werner Hertzog's documentary called "Adventure at the End of the World".
In the segment "Under The Frozen Sky" of this rare film, it shows what it looks like below the frozen ice of Antartica.
Beneath the ice and under the "frozen sky" is an other-worldly landscape home to uncanny creatures that thrive within it's extreme cold. It's a place where the "clouds" are bubbles of air trapped underneath a bluish ceiling, sliding like mercury along the contours of the ice.
My growing desire to glimpse other worlds and lifeforms mesmerizes me whenever I learn about new wonders of Earth. Antartica is a wonderful place. But at one point the film mentioned that the challenge of human adventure and our thirst for the unknown seems to have ended in this cold desolate part of our planet.
"On a Cultural Level, it meant the end of adventure" when the last unknown spots of the earth was exposed and "Human adventure...lost it's meaning", the narrator says.
I felt a certain sense of bleakness at this thought.
However, when Herzog mentioned that Antartica "comes closest to what a future space settlement would look like", I sprang with renewed enthusiasm. And this enthusiasm was fed further by the timely arrival of Apex Magazine in my mailbox yesterday. Upon which my attention was immediately caught by Jeff Carlson's novelette curiously entitled "The Frozen Sky".
It was set in the sixth moon of Jupiter, Europa.
And when i began reading it, I couldn't stop. The narrative blended so well with the science behind a world yet to be explored. It gripped me, a world with a crust of thick ice, possibly riddled with exotic alien lifeforms hidden underneath. Suddenly, the scenes from "Under The Frozen Sky" played back in mind.The Frozen Sky is an example of the kind of science fiction that I want to read in the coming era of exoplanet discoveries. Soon I hope to read stories where the exoplanetary world used as a setting is given as much personality as the characters themselves. And I would like the science behind the story to be imaginatively elegant, so as to be almost theoretical.
Narratives have that amazing quality to educate and to inspire. And it would be great to start a cycle of ideas flowing between new exoplanet discoveries and science fiction. Imagine all the new inspiration it would bring for space travel, for human adventure, and desire for discovering new wonders.

The Sonneteer Ponders Habitable Exoplanets

I recently had a very pleasant surprise when a Sonneteer accepted a 'sonnet dare' that i posted to her via twitter. I was curious as to how Kate Sherrod the poet behind the typewriter at SupperTime Sonnets--would render the sociological impact of exoplanet discoveries.
And sure enough, I got a wonderful sonnet entitled "In Which I ponder Habitable Planets".
This sonnet expresses the most poetic question ever for planetary science:
"Is earth unique as an abode for life like ours?"
But the best is yet to come. I was not aware that Kate would actually read the sonnet herself! And what a soothing voice I heard when i listened to her KateofMind podcast!
Kudos to Kate for a nice sonnet-rendition of the idea that some folks would still not believe it even if Kepler discovers far-away earth-like worlds. After all, she says--there are still naysayers of the moon landing even after the LRO recently snapped photos of Apollo 11.
Thus, whether Kepler finds Habitable Planets or not, we can still enjoy the sonnet as I did!

In Which I Ponder Habitable Exoplanets

In March the Kepler probe began to seek
The subtle signs of planets far in space
That circle other stars. Is Earth unique
As an abode for life like ours? This place
Which some believe's created just for us
Might not be all that special, all that rare.
But then I ponder on Copernicus,
Who laid the Ptolemaic theory bare
And proved to all the Earth goes round the sun.
It took hundreds of years before some folk
Accepted this, unbanned his book and one
Suspects that out there still, like some great joke
Are people who'll insist his work's all lies
And exoplanets naught but fireflies.

Space Alone

A great story! 'Space Alone' is a great tale for future explorers of exoplanets (exoplorers), and for those who search for life in space.

Farthest, Nearest...and any exoplanet in between

On twitter, someone asked me a question how far away the most distant confirmed exoplanet is. The answer is quite tricky. Rapid developments in exoplanet discovery renders the answer outdated within a few months or few years. Therefore, my answer will involve *how* to obtain the answer from the web so that the answer will have a longer "shelf-life" and stay as close to accurate as possible. Hopefully, this post will also benefit those who want answers to related questions--such as what the closest exoplanet is, and so on.
Start by going to The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia and sort the catalog via distance (by clicking the distance column).
The answer yields the topnotch most distant exoplanets to date OGLE-05-390L b, MOA-2007-BLG-400-L b at around 6,500 & 6,000 parsecs. This is roughly around ~21,190 & ~19,500 light-years away respectively.
But remember, independent exoplanet researchers from different countries may publish papers with different values. And you may stumble upon outdated information. The exoplanet SWEEPS-10 is still listed at 22,000 light-years away. So a little bit of research is definitely needed to answer questions in the nascent field of Exoplanetology.
Now if you want to be adventurous and ask a "mashup" question such as "What is the closest Super-earth?" then I recommend playing with the list of exoplanets on Exoplanetology at Freebase.
In that interface, you can add columns and refine the view to obtain details you've never seen before. More details will be reserved for another blogpost about Freebase, but the main thing to note is that answering your questions means getting involved with it in some way.
In a new field of Science, you most often need to input reliable data in order to obtain reliable answers. You can start by getting an account at Freebase and start inputting reliable data from reliable sources.
In this day and age where Citizen Science is proliferating, your interest is very precious. You are encouraged to contribute and learn. That makes you part of the revolution in Science.

On Another World

Forty years ago, man set foot on another world. The Moon. It is a great triumph for humanity. A symbol of man's inherent boldness for discovery and adventure.
How does it feel like to step on another world? Buzz Aldrin recounts a weird experience upon kicking moon dust which briefly flashes the shape of a petal on the trajectory back to the moon's airless surface. It must have felt something like walking on water.
It's been 40 years since man felt an other-worldy experience. The Moon may have truly felt like "another world" forty years ago, but the moon is not an "other" planet (at least not in the way we defined what a 'planet' is).
Landing on the moon has been a giant leap for mankind, but now it's time for the next step. A step into another world.
Mars.
What could be in store for us on a red planet? The only way to find out is to get our foot on it's surface. Then it will be the first terrestrial planet to dip our feet other than earth. Who knows what mysteries lay hidden on another planet?
Let us celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 with the hope of a bold move to a brave new world.
In another time, in another place, I could have chosen to root for Alpha Centauri. But the time is now. And so I choose Mars.

Exoplanetology's Twitter Manifesto

When I started the @exoplanetology twitter account I did not expect that it would take me to an amazing journey through fascinating worlds. Well, twitter is a world of it's own, but it has allowed me to learn and discover new interesting realms that i could never have known without this medium.

My goal to answer the question, "How does the discovery of exoplanets impact humanity's culture and future?" --has guided me into worlds I've never known before. Little did I know that tweeting would become a soul-searching activity as well.

So I am forever thankful to the Tweeps--my Karass, the tweeting embodiment of the hive mind. They helped shape the path to new genres that I am dabbling into.

My latest foray, which I am so excited about--is exploring planetary worlds in fiction, comic books, graphic novels, short stories, movies, music, and videogames. I focus only on those that has something to do with worlds and exoplanets. I became interested in SciFi after I realized how inspiring it is to delve into the narrative behind planetary worlds, all the while enjoying the scientific study of real exoplanets. Without the stories, the study of Exoplanetology would be a bore. In a sense, Imaginative Science is the latest addition to my playground.

Thus, if you follow @exoplanetology then you would be taken along on a journey of exploration in science as well as in literature, culture, and some bit of futurism.

Some wackiness slips in between the cracks, occasionally. I often end up drawing other-worldy insights from mundane experiences, or finding planetary metaphors from simple things like soap bubbles.

Sometimes I tweet about what an astrophysics arXiv article is really saying, or you would just find me RT'ing or raving about a new comic book set on a distant alien world.

I like synthesizing. Often i'd tweet about how I can mix different subjects, for example Synthetic Biology and Astrobiology to find insights about detecting life on other planets. Exoplanetology is itself a synthesis of different fields of Science, namely Astronomy and Astrophysics, so it does not come as a surprise that I like to mash up things! I think it resulted in my blogging style becoming 'interstitial'.

The keyword is "Worlds", and it has become my favorite word lately. For me, "Worlds" is a key that integrates Science and Fiction, using imagination as the glue. And from that stems a redefinition: Aside from being "The Art and Science of New Worlds", Exoplanetology is also the over-all study and "Thought" of Worlds.

My intent with this twitter account is to be a node between the Third Culture and the informed public. Perhaps this makes it part of the Fourth Culture--a term derived after C.P. Snow's lecture, A Tale of Two Cultures.

The @Exoplanetology account is being stewarded by a non-scientist non-literati but with a strong interest in Science, the Humanities and the Arts--plus a penchant for seeking Truth. Thus there is no other way but for @Exoplanetology to act as node between these seemingly disparate things.

In terms of that perennial debate on God or un-God, I tweet from the standpoint of an active 'Seeker'--one who thinks that perhaps we don't know enough just yet to make a solid stance on whether God does or does not exist, but that there is plenty of Wonders in the Universe to inspire Awe, and then ponder upon that mystery. As such, it makes me forever curious.

Lastly, I myself am confused whether to treat @Exoplanetology as a person or as a robotic curator with no will of its own. But i've learned to appreciate the ambiguity of such treatment, after I realized that stewarding Exoplanetology has changed me, and guided my thinking in a lot of ways too.

The melding of the person and a meme is quite interesting to me, for I've never seen a nascent field of science come with a personality along with it's presence on the web. This is "only in twitter" they say, only in twitter.

I am @Exoplanetology and this is my Twitter Manifesto.

Starspots and Exoplanets

This image is way too cool! It looks like it's from a page of a comic book or graphic novel, but it wasn't drawn by an artist. A supercomputer made this simulation of a sunspot in striking scientific detail.
Here's a little trivia:
Did you know that most sunspots are bigger than Earth? Sunspots can be up to several times larger than the diameter of the Earth. And sunspots are really "cool", cooler than the surrounding region of the Sun's surface.
Now this pretty model of a sunspot may be similar to the spots on the surface of other stars. And so we call them Starspots.
Starspots may be pretty but it's not really appealing to planet-hunters. The reason is that starspots may interfere with the transit method of finding planets. It may even distort the measurement of the exoplanet's true size.
The transit method relies on measuring the slight dimming of starlight as the planet passes across our field of view of the star. But huge starspots of an active star may be mis-interpreted as a planet since it also dims the light as the spots move across the star, often in the same direction as the planets.
That is why planet-hunters hoping to bag a new exoplanet discovery are wary of starspots when trying to interpret their data. They use all sorts of noise-reduction techniques to normalize the figures, and avoid the confusion.
But here's the interesting part: because of starspots, known exoplanets are given a chance to help astronomers study the surface of other stars. Irregular dips, bumps and spikes along the lightcurves may be attributed to starspots (if proven that it was not another planet that caused the bumps). Thus, known exoplanets then allow astronomers to approximate the size of the starspot, it's speed of movement, and it's rotational period around the parent star.
And consequently, the spots tell a lot about it's parent star such as the "solar-like" activity cycle, and the star's speed of rotation.
And there you have it! The unexpected relationship between Starspots and Exoplanets is actually a bitter-sweet engagement that poses a challenge to planet-hunters at first, but eventually brings us greater knowledge of exoplanetary systems in the long run.

Fireflies in the Sky

If you are enthralled by the sight of fireflies then you should definitely see Iridium Flares. They're like fireflies in the sky. It's my way of describing it after I saw a moving flash of light from a firefly just the other night. It made me remember the first time I saw an Iridium Flare months ago while I was randomly stargazing. It was an amazing treat! It was quite different from a 'falling star' so it ticked my curiosity. And i was able to verify that it was an Iridium flare using an online tool from NASA.
Iridium Flares are bright flashes of sunlight reflected by the satellites. But the light from Fireflies are produced via Bioluminiscence. The wonders that these two marvels provide is a great way to get inspired by nature and technology: Fireflies and Satellites, what a tandem!
So how do you get to see Iridium Flares? Head to Heavens Above and check when the next flare will be visible from your area. And if you have a gPhone or iPhone, there is an app that extends the data from the Heavens Above website to provide you with a list of the next occurence of a flare visible from your current location. These mobile apps goes by the same name, "Iridium Flares".
Summer's here, look down and the sparks from fireflies will definitely bring you to an eerie magical world. Look up and the stars and flares will treat you to an exoplanetary sight.
Fireflies and Satellites are two marvels from different realms, yet these "fireflies in the sky" signify an important synthesis: Biology and Technology, Nature and Astronomy, Earth and Space. They all go well together. Just take a look.

The Living Rings of an Exoplanet

An idea came to my mind immediately after I learned that one of the rings of Saturn is being replenished by ejected material from Enceladus.
What if on a distant exoplanetary system, life manages to spark and thrive within the sub-surface ocean of an Enceladus-like exomoon? And if that exomoon spews out material the same way Enceladus does, then microscopic lifeforms may get ejected along with the salty nutrients, perhaps by piggybacking on ice crystals or water droplets of the plumes. If they survive the trip outward through the vents, what comes next is fascinating: Life on Exoplanetary rings! They will then thrive off the minerals and nutrients of the rings as it is replenished by the exomoon.
We call these resilient organisms as Extremophiles. They are those that thrive in harsh environments where we don't expect life to flourish.
Do you remember the water bear that survived in outer space? Remember the recently-discovered species of bacteria that live in Earth's Stratosphere? We can almost say that with extremophiles, anything is possible! Therefore, this conjecture of life on planetary rings is worth pondering upon.
What will these "Living Exoplanet Rings" look like? Well, if it exists then it would provide a spectacular sight to behold.
Imagine a multi-colored band of rings, each band occupied by different species adapted to the properties of each ring. If this scenario happened on Enceladus, it would not just be the E-rings that would be populated by micro-organisms. As they feed, evolve and grow in size, some species would migrate to another orbit or band of ring.
And if these living ring ecosystem evolves with enough complexity, they may even pulsate, sparkle or glitter. Imagine all the colors and beauty that a "living ring" of a planet would exhibit. It would be like a flat coral reef in space. The beauty of an artificial Planetary Ring Art Installation is no match for the primeval art created by Nature and Life.
And what would these microscopic "ring organisms" look like? Well, perhaps it may look just like any other cellular lifeform but in this scenario it may develop a crytal-like structure in it's membrane to enable itself to link and separate with other crystals. Or perhaps they may exploit the ionized particles in the rings to use magnetism for 'locomotion'. I am simply postulating a mechanism by which they can increase or decrease their size and mass in order to migrate to other rings of orbit. They may utilize crystals for other purposes as well, bending and focusing light for cellular communication, and perhaps for chemical synthesis--in other words--for cooking!
I speculate that once a migration loop occurs between those thriving on the rings and those living on the exomoon, then the rate and diversity of evolution of these ring-lifeforms may be boosted, along with hastened mutations caused by cosmic rays. Those that get swept back onto the orbiting moon would reproduce to create another set of species that is already adapted to live on the planetary rings, plus some random extra qualities of the next generation. All they need to do is ride on the jet stream from the sub-surface ocean through the vents and out into space and onto the rings, and the cycle goes on.
If we further take into account the possibility that the ring organisms may eventually end up on the planet itself, then a diverse ecosystem will be created that encompasses a moon, a planet, and it's rings.
You see, the presence of life makes things a little bit more exciting. And for planetary rings, it may be true as well--even when it is within the confines of conjecture and imagination.

Links:
ESA: Sodium salts point to subsurface ocean on Enceladus

Planetary Recession

Planetary Recession is defined as the decline of the rate at which new planets are discovered, which may be attributed to an economic recession--resulting in the lack of funds for planet-hunting efforts.
I whimsically coined "Planetary Recession" after I noticed that the number of exoplanet discoveries this year are so few compared to last year. As the graph shows, one would think that since we're already half-way of 2009 we should now have at least 30 new exoplanet discoveries, yet we only have a handful.
Also this concept comes after I learned that TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was not selected by the NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) Program.
Considering the fact that there are billions of planets out there, and that planet-hunting (dare i call it Exoplanetology?) may become a recognized profession someday, one would think that there would be a positive rate or upward curve at which new exoplanet discoveries would trickle in every year.
It's just sad that a slowdown of exoplanet discoveries may be somehow related to the lack of funding due to economic recession. Thus coining the term "Planetary Recession" is an attempt to playfully soften the blow, or inject a sense of humor at least.
On the bright side, Kepler will soon bring a sudden surge of exoplanet count within two or three years from now. And hopefully it comes with the recovery of the economy of our planet as well.