Author: mayrazamudio

Even before the Kepler Mission, finding extrasolar planets was really tough. Why do you think finding exoplanets is so hard?    [Extrasolar planets are extremely dim, very close to their stars, and so far away that the star’s glare ruins our chances of seeing the planets.] For decades, astronomers had suspected there were extrasolar planets out […]

In our planetarium sky, there are a couple of stars that have giant-size planets orbiting them, but with Mars-like orbits—farther out from their stars than Earth is from the Sun. They are not hot Jupiters. Are they strange planets?  You can see one of those stars year-round in the constellation of Cepheus.To find Cepheus, let’s start with […]

We’re especially interested in planets that might be good homes for living things. DIGITAL EFFECT: Our Solar SystemLift off from Earth, and move the scene to a top-down view of our Solar System, with the orbit lines of all the planets (out to Neptune) visible. If possible, scale the Sun and the planets sizes up […]

Using another very clever technique, we can not only discover extrasolar planets, but determine fairly accurately how big they are and, armed with Kepler’s Third Law, we can find out how far they are from the star. At this point show an orrery (model star with planets) with a light sensor aimed at it and […]

So if we will be getting all this data from the Kepler mission, how will we know if we do find an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone? Let’s imagine we are the planet finders and have a look at some data. VISUAL 21 (still): Light Curve Kepler-10b Here is light curve data from one […]

DIGITAL EFFECT: ExoplanetsTurn on all exoplanet markers. We are finding new extrasolar planets all the time.But the goal is to find these habitable, Earth-like planets. DIGITAL EFFECT: ConclusionEnsure that Cygnus and the Kepler field of view target area are visible. Scale up the Kepler spacecraft image and rotate it to “point” toward the target area. […]

DIGITAL EFFECT: Go to EveningFast forward to approximately 90 minutes after sunset.Fade out music as stars, Moon and planets appear. Good evening. The sky above us may look like an ordinary nighttime sky, but for today’s presentation, entitled “Stonehenge,” we have transported you to southern England, on today’s date, but about 3500 years ago. Has […]

Hawkins started with an observation, discovered a few hundred years ago: on the first day of summer—the longest day of the year—the Sun will rise just over this stone when observed from the central area. Indicate the stone on the far right with a pointer. VISUAL 5 (still): Heelstone Closeup. Fade on and scale up […]

DIGITAL EFFECT: Sun Rise to Set Fade scene off and reset time to approximately one hour before sunrise on -1500/10/31 with cardinal points on before fading the scene back on. Audience may predict where along the horizon the Sun will rise. Also, if possible turn on a 2D trail for the Sun for tracking the […]

Gerald Hawkins guessed that if Stonehenge marked one alignment with a celestial object, the Sun, it might mark others as well, like the sunrise and sunset we just recorded, or the risings or settings of stars or planets. To test that suspicion, his hypothesis, Hawkins first had to “reconstruct” Stonehenge, at least on paper, to […]