Friday, April 26, 2013

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News


TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:32 AM PDT

Among the many planets detected orbiting other stars (exoplanets) over the last twenty years, a little less than three hundred periodically pass in front of their star. This is what astronomers call a planetary transit. Exoplanets that "transit" their stars are key objects for the study of other planetary systems, because they are the only planets beyond our solar system that can be studied in detail, both in terms of their physical parameters (mass, radius, orbital parameters) and their atmospheric properties (thermal structure, dynamics, composition).

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