by Paul Gilster | Nov 17, 2021 | Exoplanetary Science |
We talked about the TOLIMAN mission last April, and the renewed interest in astrometry as the key to ferreting out possible planets around Alpha Centauri A and B. I was fortunate enough to hear Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney), who leads the team that has been developing the concept, rough out the idea at Breakthrough Discuss five years ago; Céline Bœhm (likewise at the University of Sydney) reported on more recent work at the virtual Breakthrough Discuss session this past spring. We now have an announcement from scientists involved that the space telescope mission will proceed.
Eduardo Bendek (JPL) is a member of the TOLIMAN team:
“Even for the very nearest bright stars in the night sky, finding planets is a huge technological challenge. Our TOLIMAN mission will launch a custom-designed space telescope that makes extremely fine measurements of the position of the star in the sky. If there is a planet orbiting the star, it will tug on the star betraying a tiny, but measurable, wobble.”
Work on the mission heated up in April of this year, with scientists from the University of Sydney working in partnership with Breakthrough Initiatives, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Australia’s Saber Astronautics. The mission could revolutionize our view of Centauri A and B, according to Tuthill:
“Astronomers have access to amazing technologies that allow us to find thousands of planets circling stars across vast reaches of the galaxy. Yet we hardly know anything about our own celestial backyard. It is a modern problem to have; we are like net-savvy urbanites whose social media connections are global, but we don’t know anyone living on our own block… Getting to know our planetary neighbors is hugely important. These next-door planets are the ones where we have the best prospects for finding and analyzing atmospheres, surface chemistry and possibly even the fingerprints of a biosphere – the tentative signals of life.”
Image: The University of Sydney’s Peter Tuthill, project leader for TOLIMAN. Credit: University of Sydney.
Astrometry tracks the minute changes in the position of a star that are the result of the gravitational pull of a planet. Detection of tiny angular displacements of the star allows the planet’s mass and orbit to be recovered, and unlike the situation with both radial velocity and transit methods, the astrometric signal increases with the separation of the planet and star.
That takes us out to the orbital distance for an Earth-class planet to be in the habitable zone, even though the signal is tiny, in the range of micro-arcseconds for the Alpha Centauri binary. The astrometric signal from an Earth-class planet orbiting in the habitable zone of Centauri A is 2.5 micro-arcseconds; a similar planet around Centauri B is roughly half of that.
TOLIMAN uses what the team calls a ‘diffractive pupil’ lens that spreads out the starlight and allows scientists to eliminate systematic errors and clarify the underlying signal. The flower-like pattern enhances the detection of star movement without the need for field stars as references, eliminating the need for a large aperture (such stars demand a larger collecting area). The pattern also reduces noise levels in the detector. An online description of the TOLIMAN technology explains why the nearest stellar system makes an excellent target for these methods:
With the fortuitous presence of a bright phase reference only arcseconds away, measurements are immediately 2 – 3 orders of magnitude more precise than for a randomly chosen bright field star where many-arcminute fields (or larger) are required to find background stars for this task. Maintaining the instrument imaging distortions stable over a few arcseconds is considerably easier than requiring similar stability over arcminutes or degrees. Alpha Cen’s proximity to Earth means that the angular deviations on the sky are proportionately larger (typically a factor of ~10-100 compared to a population of comparably bright stars).
Image: This is from Figure 3 of the online description of TOLIMAN referenced above. Caption: Left: pupil plane for TOLIMAN diffractive-aperture telescope. Light is only collected in the 10 elliptical patches (the remainder of the pupil is opaque in this conceptual illustration, although our flight design will employ phase steps which do not waste starlight). Middle: The simulated image observing a point-source star with this pupil. The region surrounding the star can be seen to be filled with a complex pattern of interference fringes, comprising our diffractive astrometric grid. Right: A simulated image of the Alpha Cen binary star as observed by TOLIMAN. Credit: Tuthill et al.
The same description refers to TOLIMAN as a ‘modest astrometric space telescope,’ and the word ‘modest’ seems to apply in that this is a narrow-field instrument 30cm in diameter, with what proponents estimate is a fast build time on the order of 18 months. We might contrast the mission with existing astrometric missions like the European Space Agency’s space-based GAIA. The latter can make astrometric measurements in the 10s of micro-arcseconds, which basically means it is capable of detecting gas giants. TOLIMAN takes us into the realm of much smaller, rocky worlds. Because it has no need of a large aperture, it is small, inexpensive and, obviously, tightly focused on a nearby system rather than surveying a large star field.
Image: Simulated image of the Alpha Centauri system, as could be viewed by the TOLIMAN telescope. Credit: Peter Tuthill.
TOLIMAN will receive spaceflight mission operations support from Saber Astronautics, including satellite communications and command. Saber’s involvement, says Tuthill, is “a critical part of the mission.” The company has received A$788,000 from an Australian Government International Space Investment: Expand Capability grant for the telescope’s design and construction, and I rather like the spirit in CEO Jason Held’s comment on TOLIMAN:
“TOLIMAN is a mission that Australia should be very proud of – it is an exciting, bleeding-edge space telescope supplied by an exceptional international collaboration. It will be a joy to fly this bird.”
As to when we can expect the bird to fly, Tuthill speaks of launch by 2023. We might know by mid-decade whether an Earth-size rocky planet orbits Centauri A or B. Habitable zone orbits are possible around both stars.
An early description of TOLIMAN is Tuthill et al., “The TOLIMAN Space Telescope,” Proc. SPIE 10701, Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VI, 107011J (9 July 2018). Abstract.
by Paul Gilster | Nov 16, 2021 | Astrobiology and SETI |
I’m looking at a paper just accepted at The Astrophysical Journal on the subject of panspermia, the notion that life may be distributed through the galaxy by everything from interstellar dust to comets and debris from planetary impacts. We have no hard data on this — no one knows whether panspermia actually occurs from one planet to another, much less from one stellar system to another star. But we can investigate possibilities based on what we know of everything from the hardiness of organisms to the probabilities of ejecta moving on an interstellar trajectory.
In “Panspermia in a Milky Way-like Galaxy,” lead author Raphael Gobat (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile) and colleagues draw together current approaches to the question and develop a modeling technique based on our assumptions about galactic habitability and simulations of galaxy structure.
Panspermia is an ancient concept. Indeed, the word first emerges in the work of Anaxagoras (born ca. 500–480 BC) and makes its way through Lucian of Samosata (born around 125 AD), through Kepler’s Somnium, to re-emerge in 19th Century microbiology. Accidental propagation of life’s building blocks was considered by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in the early 20th Century. Fred Hoyle and Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe developed the idea still further in the 1970s and 80s.
So how do we approach a subject that has remained controversial, likely because it does not appear necessary in explaining how life emerged on our own Earth? As the paper notes, modern work falls into three distinct categories, the first involving whether or not microorganisms can survive ejection from a planetary surface and re-entry onto another. Remarkably, hypervelocity impacts are not show-stoppers for the idea, suggesting that a small fraction of spores could survive impact and transit.
As to timescale and kinds of transfer mechanisms, most work seems to have focused on mass transfer between planets in the same stellar system, usually through lithopanspermia, which is the exchange of meteoroids. It’s true, however, that transit between different stars has been investigated, looking at radiation pressure on small grains of material. There are even a few studies on whether or not a stellar system might be intentionally seeded by means of technology. The term here is directed panspermia, a subject more often treated in science fiction than academic circles.
Although not entirely. While directed panspermia is off the table for Gobat and colleagues, we’ll take a look in a month or so at what does appear in the literature. Some interesting ideas have emerged, but they’re not for today.
What Gobat and co-authors have in mind is to apply a model of galactic habitability they have developed (citation below) in conjunction with the simulations of spiral galaxies based on hydrodynamics that are found in the McMaster Unbiased Galaxy Simulations (MUGS), a set of 16 simulated galaxies developed within the last decade. On the latter, the paper notes:
These simulations made use of the cosmological zoom method, which seeks to focus computational effort into a region of interest, while maintaining enough of the surrounding large-scale structure to produce a realistic assembly history. To accomplish this, the simulation was first carried out at low resolution using N-body physics only. Dark matter halos were then identified, and a sample of interesting objects selected. The particles making up, and surrounding, these halos were then traced back to their origin, and the simulation carried out again with the region of interest simulated at higher resolution.
Simulation and re-simulation allow the MUGS galaxies to reproduce the known metallicity gradients in observed galaxies and likewise reproduce their large-scale structure, including disks, halos and bulges. The authors use one of the simulated galaxies, a spiral galaxy similar to but not identical with the Milky Way, to investigate the probability and efficiency of panspermia as dependent on the galactic environment.
Image: This is Figure 1 from the paper. Caption: Mock UV J color images of the simulated galaxy g15784 (Stinson et al. 2010; Nickerson et al. 2013), for both edge-on (left) and face-on (right) orientations, using star and gas particles, and assuming Bruzual & Charlot (2003) stellar population models and a simple dust attenuation model (Li & Draine 2001) with a gas-to-dust ratio of 0.01 at solar metallicity. Additionally, we include line emission from star particles with ages ? 50 Myr, following case B recombination (Osterbrock & Ferland 2006) and metallicity-dependent line ratios (Anders & Fritze-v. Alvensleben 2003). All panels are 50 kpc across and have a resolution of 100 pc. Two spheroidal satellites can be seen above and below the galactic plane, respectively. Credit: Gobat et al.
Panspermia appears to be more likely in the central regions of the galactic bulge, as we might assume due to the high density of stars there, a factor which counterbalances their lower habitability in this model. Panspermia is found to be much less likely as we move out into the central disk. In the model of habitability as developed by Gopat and Sungwook Hong in 2016, habitability increases as we depart from galactic center, while the new paper shows that the likelihood of panspermia works inversely, being more likely toward the bulge.
In a sense, we decouple habitability from panspermia. The paper uses the term ‘particles’ to refer not to individual stars, but to ensembles of stars with a range of masses but the same metallicity. This reflects, say the authors, the resolution limits of the simulations, which cannot track individual stars through time. From the paper, noting the narrow dynamic range of habitability vs. panspermia [the italics are mine]:
In dense regions [of the simulated galaxy], many source particles can contribute to panspermia, whereas in the outer disk and halo the panspermia probability is typically dominated by one or, at most, a few source star particles. Unlike natural habitability, whose value varies by only ? 5% throughout the galaxy, the panspermia probability has a wide dynamic range of several orders of magnitudes..
The models used here have a number of limitations, but it’s interesting that they point to panspermia as being considerably less efficient at seeding planets than the evolution of life on the planets themselves. At best, the authors find the probability of panspermia to be no more than 3% of all the star particles in their simulation. This may be an overly generous figure, and the paper acknowledges that it cannot be more precisely quantified other than to say that when it comes to efficiency, local evolution wins going away. Higher resolution galaxy simulations will offer more realistic insights.
We have a result, as the authors acknowledge, that is more qualitative than quantitative, a measure of how much we have to learn about galaxies themselves, and about the Milky Way in particular. The sample galaxy, for example, has a higher bulge-to-disk ratio than the Milky Way. But more significantly, the capture fraction of spores by target planets and the likelihood that life actually does develop on planets considered habitable are subjects with no concrete data to firm up the conclusions.
We can anticipate that future simulations will take into account a rotating evolving galaxy as opposed to the single simulation ‘snapshot’ the paper offers. Nonetheless, this modeling of organic compounds being transferred between stars points to the orders of magnitude difference in the likelihood of panspermia between the inner and the outer disk, a useful finding. Given that so few of the star particles the simulation generates have high panspermia probability, the process may occur but under conditions that make it much less effective than prebiotic evolution.
The paper is Gobat et al., “Panspermia in a Milky Way-like Galaxy,” accepted at the Astrophysical Journal (preprint). The paper on galactic habitability is Gobat & Hong, “Evolution of galaxy habitability,” Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 592, A96 (04 August 2016). Abstract.
by Paul Gilster | Nov 12, 2021 | Exoplanetary Science |
Circumbinary planets are those that orbit two stars, a small but growing category of worlds — we’ve detected some 14 thus far, thanks to Kepler’s good work, and that of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The latest entry, TIC 172900988, illustrates the particular challenge such planets represent. Transit photometry is a standard method for finding planets, detecting the now familiar drop in starlight as the planet moves between us and the surface of the host star. Kepler found thousands of exoplanets this way. But when two stars are involved, things get complicated.
Image: The newly discovered planet, TIC 172900988b, is roughly the radius of Jupiter, and several times more massive, but it orbits its two stars in less than one year. This world is hot and unlike anything in our Solar System. Credit: PSI/Pamela L. Gay.
Three transits are required to determine the orbital path of a planet. For us to make a detection, a circumbinary planet will have to transit both stars, but the timing of the transits can vary. The planet may transit the first star, then the second, before returning to transit the first. Nader Haghighipour (Planetary Science Institute) points out that the orbital period of a circumbinary planet will always be much longer than the orbital period of the binary star, and that means detecting three transits will be problematic for a telescope like TESS, which observes each portion of sky for only 27 days.
The paper on the discovery of TIC 172900988b lays out these problems:
Finding transiting planets orbiting around binary stars is much more difficult than around single stars. The transits are shallower (due to the constant ‘third-light’ dilution from the binary companion), noisier (due to starspots and stellar activity from two stars), and can be blended with the stellar eclipses. This difficulty is greatly compounded when the observations cover a single conjunction and, even if multiple transits are detected as in the system presented here, they are neither periodic, nor have the same depth and duration… The transit times and shapes depend on the orientation and motion of the binary stars and of the CBP [circumbinary planet] at the observed times. The complexity of such transits is both a curse and a blessing…
A blessing, the authors argue, because such a detection yields information “richer than what can be obtained from a single transit of a single-star planet,” offering better estimation of the planet’s orbital period.
Image: A newly discovered planet was observed in the system TIC 172900988. In TESS data, it passed in front of the primary star (right) and 5 days later (shown) passed in front of the second star (left). These stars are just over 30% larger than the Sun, and differ very little in size. Credit: PSI/Pamela L. Gay.
Haghighipour is part of a team of astronomers with circumbinary planet experience; he also contributed to a 2020 paper in The Astronomical Journal that produced a technique for discovering circumbinary planets using only two transits, one across each star during the same conjunction. It was this method, ideally suited for TESS, that led the same team to make the just announced discovery of TIC 172900988b. This is the first TESS circumbinary planet to be found using these methods.
TIC 172900988b takes 200 days to complete a full orbit of the binary system. The planet is a gas giant of Jupiter size, the most massive transiting circumbinary planet found thus far. The team, led by Veselin B. Kostov (SETI Institute), observed it transit the primary star, followed five days later by a transit of the secondary, as the binary eclipsed itself over a 20-day orbit.
The Kepler mission discovered its circumbinary worlds by finding pairs of transits during a single conjunction, making it clear that the phenomenon is common. In fact, Jean Schneider and Michel Chevreton (both at the Paris Observatory) analyzed this likely observational signal as far back as 1990 in a paper for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Now TESS has a circumbinary discovery of its own, despite its much shorter dwell time on the stars in its field. Adds Kostov:
“The occurrence of multiple closely-spaced transits during one orbit is a unique observation signature of transiting circumbinary planets. This is a geometrical phenomenon that provides a new planet detection method. The discovery of TIC 172900988b is the first demonstration that the method works.”
Image: This is Figure 5 from the paper. Caption: The photometric data shown in Figure 4 phase-folded on a linear period of P = 19.65802 days. The left panel shows the primary eclipse and the right panel shows the secondary eclipse. The different data sets are vertically offset in the lower panels for clarity. The phase change of the secondary eclipse relative to the primary—indicative of the apsidal motion of the binary—is clearly seen in the right panels. Credit: Kostov et al.
We learn in the paper’s analysis of the detection that no further data from TESS will become available on this planet, making future study the province of other instruments. From the paper:
We note that TESS will observe the target again in Sectors 44 through 47 (2021 October to 2022 January). Unfortunately, it will miss the predicted transits for the corresponding conjunctions by several weeks. Thus follow-up observations from other instruments are key for strongly constraining the orbit and mass of the CBP [circumbinary planet]. In particular, observing the predicted 2022 February-March conjunction of the CBP is critical for solving the currently-ambiguous orbit of the planet. As a relatively bright target (V = 10.141 mag), the system is accessible for high resolution spectroscopy, e.g. Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, transit spectroscopy. TIC 172900988 demonstrates the discovery potential of TESS for circumbinary planets with orbital periods greatly exceeding the duration of the observing window.
The paper is Kostov et al., “TIC 172900988: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet Detected in One Sector of TESS Data,” The Astronomical Journal 162, No. 6 (10 November 2021), 234 (abstract / preprint).
by Paul Gilster | Nov 10, 2021 | Exoplanetary Science |
Although we’ve been talking this week about big telescopes, from extremely large designs like the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope to the space-based HabEx/LUVOIR descendant prioritized by Astro2020, small instruments continue to do interesting work around the edges. I just noticed a tiny one called the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) that fills a gap in our study of M-dwarfs, those small stars whose flares are so problematic for habitability.
Under development at Arizona State University, the space-based SPARCS is just halfway into its development phase, but let’s take a look at it in light of ongoing work on M-dwarf planets, because it bodes well for turning theories about flare activity into data that can firm up our understanding. The problem is that while theoretical studies delve into ultraviolet flaring on these stars, the longest intensive UV monitoring on an M-dwarf done thus far has been a thirty hour effort with the Hubble instrument.
We need more, which is why the SPARCS idea emerged. A team of researchers led by ASU’s Evgenya Shkolnik has produced an overview of the NASA-funded mission’s science drivers and its intention of deepening our understanding of star-planet interactions. “Know thy star, know thy planet,. . . especially in the ultraviolet (UV),” comments the team in their abstract, which also points to the necessity of data collection for these intensely studied stars, ubiquitous in the galaxy and known to host interesting planets like Proxima Centauri b.
Image: An example of M-dwarf flaring. DG CVn, a binary consisting of two red dwarf stars shown here in an artist’s rendering, unleashed a series of powerful flares seen by NASA’s Swift. At its peak, the initial flare was brighter in X-rays than the combined light from both stars at all wavelengths under typical conditions. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger.
Can such a world be habitable? Recent observations have shown that flare events produce a more severe flux increase in the ultraviolet than the optical; a flare peaking on the order of 0.01x the star’s quiescent flux in the optical, write the authors, can at UV wavelengths brighten by a factor of 14000. UV ‘superflare’ events — as much as 10,000 times more energetic than the flares produced by our G-class Sun — can produce 200x flux increases that are expected to occur on a daily basis on young, active M-dwarfs.
Thus habitability can be compromised, with UV radiation damaging planetary atmospheres, eroding ozone and producing lethal levels of radiation at the surface. An Earth-like planet in the habitable zone can likewise be subject to methane depletion under the kind of flaring Proxima Centauri has been known to produce. Thus the composition of an M-dwarf planet’s atmosphere is subject to interactions with its star that may prevent life from ever arising, or drastically affect its development.
SPARCS is a CubeSat observatory carrying a 9-cm telescope and the associated gear to perform photometric monitoring of M-dwarf flare activity in the near (258?308 nm) and far ultraviolet (153?171 nm). The target: 20 M-dwarfs in a range of ages from 10 million to 5 billion years old, examined during a mission lifetime of one year. Planned for launch in 2023 into a heliosynchronous orbit that offers “decent thermal stability and optimized continuity in target monitoring,” SPARCS will track flare color, energies, occurrence rate and duration on active as well as inactive M-dwarfs.
The authors believe the observatory will also improve our atmospheric models for M-dwarf planets, useful information as we look toward future biosignature investigations, and helpful as we fill an obvious gap in our data on this class of star. The software onboard is interesting in itself:
The payload software is able to run monitoring campaigns at constant detector exposure time and gain, but due to the expected high amplitudes of M dwarf UV flares, observations throughout the nominal mission will be conducted using a feature of the software that autonomously adjusts detector exposure times and gains to mitigate the occurrence of pixel saturation during observations of flaring events. SPARCS will be the first space-based stellar astrophysics observatory that adopts such an onboard autonomous exposure control.
So we have a small space telescope that will be able to monitor its targets in both near- and far-ultraviolet wavelengths simultaneously, managed by a dedicated onboard payload processor that allows the observatory to adjust for pixel saturation during flare events. This “autonomous dynamic exposure control algorithm” is a story in itself, adding depth to a mission to investigate the most extremely variable stars in the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. SPARCS should help us learn whether these long-lived stars can allow planetary habitability as they age into a less dramatic maturity.
The paper is Ramiaramanantsoa et al., “Time-Resolved Photometry of the High-Energy Radiation of M Dwarfs with the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS),” accepted for publication in Astronomische Nachrichten (preprint).
by Paul Gilster | Nov 9, 2021 | Deep Sky Astronomy & Telescopes |
Looking into Astro2020’s recommendations for ground-based astronomy, I was heartened with the emphasis on ELTs (Extremely Large Telescopes), as found within the US-ELT project to develop the Thirty Meter Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope, both now under construction. Such instruments represent our best chance for studying exoplanets from the ground, even rocky worlds that could hold life. An Astro2020 with different priorities could have spelled the end of both these ELT efforts in the US even as the European Extremely Large Telescope, with its 40-meter mirror, moves ahead, with first light at Cerro Armazones (Chile) projected for 2027.
So the ELTs persist in both US and European plans for the future, a context within which to consider how planet detection continues to evolve. So much of what we know about exoplanets has come from radial velocity methods. These in turn rely critically on spectrographs like HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher), which is installed at the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6m telescope at La Silla in Chile, and its successor ESPRESSO (Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations). We can add the NEID spectrometer on the WIYN 3.5m telescope at Kitt Peak to the mix, now operational and in the hunt for ever tinier Doppler shifts in the light of host stars.
We’re measuring the tug a planet puts on its star by looking radially — how is the star pulled toward us, then away, as the planet moves along its orbit? Given that the Earth produces a movement of a mere 9 centimeters per second on the Sun, it’s heartening to see that astronomers are closing on that range right now. NEID has demonstrated a precision of better than 25 centimeters per second in the tests that led up to its commissioning, giving us another tool for exoplanet detection and confirmation.
But this is a story that also reminds us of the vast amount of data being generated in such observations, and the methods needed to get this information distributed and analyzed. On an average night, NEID will collect about 150 gigabytes of data that is sent to Caltech, and from there via a data management network called Globus to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) for analysis and processing. TACC, in turn, extracts metadata and returns the data to Caltech for further analysis. The results are made available by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute via its NEID Archive.
Image: The NEID instrument is shown mounted on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Credit: NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/KPNO/NSF/AURA.
What a contrast with the now ancient image of the astronomer on a mountaintop coming away with photographic plates that would be analyzed with instruments like the blink comparator Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto in 1930. The data now come in avalanche form, with breakthrough work occurring not only on mountaintops but in the building of data pipelines like these that can be generalized for analysis on supercomputers. The vast caches of data contain the seeds of future discovery.
Joe Stubbs leads the Cloud & Interactive Computing group at TACC:
“NEID is the first of hopefully many collaborations with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and other institutions where automated data analysis pipelines run with no human-in-the-loop. Tapis Pipelines, a new project that has grown out of this collaboration, generalizes the concepts developed for NEID so that other projects can automate distributed data analysis on TACC’s supercomputers in a secure and reliable way with minimal human supervision.”
NEID also makes a unique contribution to exoplanet detection by being given over to the analysis of activity on our own star. Radial velocity is vulnerable to confusion over starspots — created by convection on the surface of exoplanet host stars and mistaken for planetary signatures. The plan is to use NEID during daylight hours with a smaller solar telescope developed for the purpose to track this activity. Eric Ford (Penn State) is an astrophysicist at the university where NEID was designed and built:
“Thanks to the NEID solar telescope, funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation, NEID won’t sit idle during the day. Instead, it will carry out a second mission, collecting a unique dataset that will enhance the ability of machine learning algorithms to recognize the signals of low-mass planets during the nighttime.”
Image: A new instrument called NEID is helping astronomers scan the skies for alien planets. TACC supports NEID with supercomputers and expertise to automate the data analysis of distant starlight, which holds evidence of new planets waiting to be discovered. WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Credit: Mark Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSF.
Modern astronomy in a nutshell. We’re talking about data pipelines operational without human intervention, and machine-learning algorithms that are being tuned to pull exoplanet signals out of the noise of starlight. In such ways does a just commissioned spectrograph contribute to exoplanetary science through an ever-flowing data network now indispensable to such work. Supercomputing expertise is part of the package that will one day extract potential biosignatures from newly discovered rocky worlds. Bring on the ELTs.
