Comments on: What We Really See https://briankoberlein.com/2017/03/18/what-we-really-see/ Brian Koberlein Tue, 19 Feb 2019 13:26:59 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3 By: anonemiss https://briankoberlein.com/2017/03/18/what-we-really-see/#comment-5283 Tue, 16 May 2017 18:52:00 +0000 https://briankoberlein.com/?p=6555#comment-5283 “99,99999%”

I am not sure where you got this number from, but a recent lecture about exoplanets by a NASA guy said that only 1% of planets orbits in the plane of the sky, so from the billion stars around us (GAIA mission target) we can only detect about 10,000,000 solar systems with the transit method….poor us 🙁

NB: just thinking about now I guess orbit inclination can have any number between 0-360, but because we don’t care which side is up then from 0-180, the transit method will probably work if the inclination is within 1 degree so chance of random solar system has that its ecliptic is in the plane of the sky: 1/180 ~ 0.5% and not 0.000001%

]]> By: Brian Koberlein https://briankoberlein.com/2017/03/18/what-we-really-see/#comment-5110 Tue, 21 Mar 2017 13:24:04 +0000 https://briankoberlein.com/?p=6555#comment-5110 That is the limitation to the transit method. If the planet doesn’t pass our line of sight, we won’t see it. There are other ways, such as the Doppler method, to find planets, but they are more challenging.

]]> By: Johann Lannon https://briankoberlein.com/2017/03/18/what-we-really-see/#comment-5109 Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:53:04 +0000 https://briankoberlein.com/?p=6555#comment-5109 I am just getting into astronomy and this article was very enlightening. Thank you.

]]> By: Claude Marcil https://briankoberlein.com/2017/03/18/what-we-really-see/#comment-5108 Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:45:10 +0000 https://briankoberlein.com/?p=6555#comment-5108 What about the bodies orbiting outside the plane of our line of sight? 99,99999% of the planes of orbits probably don’t pass by our line of sight ???

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