Astroblog: Now about transits and Gliese 581c

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Now about transits and Gliese 581c

I mentioned that the MOST telescope was going to scan Gliese 581 to see if the planet Gliese 581c transited it. A transit would give us a far better mass and radius of the palnet, an potentailly allow us to study other properties, such as the atmosphere. However, there is only roughly a one in 30 chance that the planets orbit will be aligned so we can see a transit.

An amateur astronomer, eansbro, observed Gliese 581 on May 7, but didn't pick up a transit. There is no offical word from the MOST team yet, but this May 11 interview with them suggests they didn't see anything either. Then again this quote

"We had our first chance earlier this week," Matthews told The Tyee. "We'll have another intense stakeout in less than two weeks."

may suggest they did see a hint, and are getting ready to confirm it. We will have to wait to get the official results, and I wouldn't get your hopes up from an ambigous sentence, but it would be so cool if they got a transit.

UPDATE: I over interpreted the article. The MOST team are still analysing data, and will require several more observations before they can say either yay or nay. Also, eansbro has not elimainated all transits, jut one class of transit, and he will be observing again as well. So, we are still very much in the don't know stage.

Labels: Astronomy, exoplanet, Gliese 581 c