Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> JPL AWARDS CONTRACTS FOR PLANET-HUNTING MISSION STUDIES
>
> Creative sparks are flying as four contract-winning teams
> begin the quest to design Terrestrial Planet Finder, an
> ambitious mission in NASA's Origins Program that will look for
> possible life-supporting planets around other stars.
Here's what I would do:
Using the earth's spectral line signature as a base, and subtracting the
spectral signature of the sun from all other G2 class stars own signatures, look
for periodic variances in the lines consistent with earth's signature, which
would indicate an orbiting terrestrial planet. This is a bit different from the
Macy team's standard practice, and maybe I'm being too simplistic here. One
thing I'm surprised about is that there aren't more interferometric observations
being done. I was under the impression that that was the surefire method to spot
actual planets. Any news on this front?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:08 MDT