John Johnson (astronomer)
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John Johnson (astronomer)
John Asher Johnson (4 January 1977) is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at Harvard. He is the first tenured African-American physical science professor in the history of the university. Johnson is well known for discovering three of the first known planets smaller than the Earth outside of the solar system, including the first Mars-sized exoplanet. Early life and education Johnson grew up in St. Louis. He graduated from the University of Missouri at Rolla (since renamed the Missouri University of Science and Technology) in 1999 with a Bachelors of Science degree in physics. In-between his undergraduate degree and graduate school, he also worked as a research scientist with LIGO at Caltech. He entered graduate school at UC Berkeley having never taken a course in astronomy. Johnson completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 2007 under Geoff Marcy. His thesis was titled "Planet Hunting In New Stellar Domains" and included the detection of several unusual hot Jupit ...
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Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in 1706 as ''La Villa de Alburquerque'' by Nuevo México governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés''.'' Named in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, the Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, 10th Duke of Alburquerque, 10th Duke of Alburquerque, the city was Old Town Albuquerque, an outpost on Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, El Camino Real linking Mexico City to the northernmost territories of New Spain. Located in the Albuquerque Basin, the city is flanked by the Sandia Mountains to the east and the West Mesa to the west, with the Rio Grande and bosque flowing from north-to-south. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Albuquerque had 564,559 residents, making it the List of United States cities by population, 32nd-most populous city ...
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LIGO
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. These observatories use mirrors spaced four kilometers apart which are capable of detecting a change of less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton. (that is, to Proxima Centauri at ). The initial LIGO observatories were funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) and were conceived, built and are operated by Caltech and MIT. They collected data from 2002 to 2010 but no gravitational waves were detected. The Advanced LIGO Project to enhance the original LIGO detectors began in 2008 and continues to be supported by the NSF, with important contributions from the United Kingdom's Science ...
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Methods Of Detecting Exoplanets
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the exoplanets reported have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star. Instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar planets. As of 2016, several different indirect methods have yielded success. Established detection methods The following methods have at least once proved successful for discovering a new planet or detecting an already discovered planet: Radial velocity A star with a planet will move in its own small orbit in response to the planet's gravity. This leads to variations in the speed with which the star move ...
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Extrasolar Planet
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, initially detected in 1988, was confirmed in 2003. There are many methods of detecting exoplanets. Transit (astronomy), Transit photometry and Doppler spectroscopy have found the most, but these methods suffer from a clear observational bias favoring the detection of planets near the star; thus, 85% of the exoplanets detected are inside the tidal locking zone. In several cases, List of multiplanetary systems, multiple planets have been observed around a star. About 1 in 5 Solar analog, Sun-like starsFor the purpose of this 1 in 5 statistic, "Sun-like" means G-type star. Data for Sun-like stars was not available so this statistic is an extrapolation from data about K-type star, K-type stars. have an "Earth-sized"For the purpose of this 1 in 5 ...
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University Of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the designation is reserved for colleges that have a graduate school. The word ''university'' is derived from the Latin ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". The first universities were created in Europe by Catholic Church monks. The University of Bologna (''Università di Bologna''), founded in 1088, is the first university in the sense of: *Being a high degree-awarding institute. *Having independence from the ecclesiastic schools, although conducted by both clergy and non-clergy. *Using the word ''universitas'' (which was coined at its foundation). *Issuing secular and non-secular degrees: grammar, rhetoric, logic, theology, canon law, notarial law.Hunt Janin: "The university ...
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Institute For Astronomy (Hawaii)
The Institute for Astronomy (IfA) is a research unit within the University of Hawaii system, led by Doug Simons as Director. IfA main headquarters are located at 2680 Woodlawn Drive in Honolulu, Hawaii, , adjacent to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa campus. Additional facilities are located at Pukalani, Maui and Hilo on Hawaii island (the Big Island). IfA employs over 150 astronomers and support staff. IfA astronomers perform research into Solar System objects, stars, galaxies and cosmology. The Institute for Astronomy was founded in 1967 to conduct research and to manage the observatory complexes at Haleakalā, Maui and the Mauna Kea Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea. It has approximately 55 faculty and employs over 300 people. See also * Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) * B612 Foundation The B612 Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation headquartered in Mill Valley, California, United States, dedicated to planetary science and planetary de ...
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National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $8.3 billion (fiscal year 2020), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing. The NSF's director and deputy director are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate, whereas the 24 president-appointed members of the National Science Board (NSB) do not require Senate confirmation. The director and deputy director are responsible for administration, planning, budgeting and day-to-day operations of the foundation, while t ...
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NExScI
The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) is part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) and is on the campus of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA. NExScI was formerly known as the Michelson Science Center and before that as the Interferometry Science Center. It was renamed NExScI in the Fall of 2008 to reflect NASA's growing interest in the search for planets outside of our solar system, also known as exoplanets. The executive director of NExScI is Charles A. Beichman. NExScI is the science, operations, and analysis service organization for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the scientists and engineers that use them. NExScI facilitates the timely and successful execution of exoplanet science by providing software infrastructure, science operations, and consulting to Exoplanet Exploration Program projects and their user communities. The activities and programs that NExScI oversees and manages are described in more ...
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NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management f ...
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Dimitar Sasselov
Dimitar D. Sasselov ( bg, Димитър Д. Съселов, born 1961) is a Bulgarian astronomer based in the United States. He is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. In 2002, Sasselov led a team that discovered the most distant planet in the Milky Way known at the time. Sasselov was born in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to a scientific family. His father was an archaeologist and his Greek mother was a horticulturist. He developed a liking for astronomy at an early age and would observe the moons of Jupiter by means of a small telescope. Sasselov finished a primary school in Nesebar and a high school in Burgas. In the 1980s, Sasselov continued his study of astronomy at the Sofia University's Faculty of Physics. After he published a paper in international scientific journals, he was invited by the University of Toronto, who offered him a scholarship. However, Sasselov was not granted an exit visa by the Bulgarian ...
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David Charbonneau
David Brian Charbonneau is a professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of exoplanets orbiting nearby, Sun-like stars. Early life and education David Charbonneau was born in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the son of Brian Charbonneau, a geologist, and Sylvia Charbonneau, a physician. When he was around 12 years old, he visited Pacific Rim National Park with his family, where he spent time playing in tide pools and observing the variety of organisms that lived in the intertidal zone. He credits this experience with sparking an early interest in science. When he was in high school, he read Stephen Hawking's ''A Brief History of Time.'' Intrigued by the ideas in the book, he decided to pursue studies in physics and astronomy, rather than biology. Charbonneau received a Bachelor of Science degree in math, physics, and astronomy from the University of Toronto in 1996. At the suggestion ...
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Hot Jupiters
Hot Jupiters (sometimes called hot Saturns) are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but that have very short orbital periods (). The close proximity to their stars and high surface-atmosphere temperatures resulted in their informal name "hot Jupiters". Hot Jupiters are the easiest extrasolar planets to detect via the radial-velocity method, because the oscillations they induce in their parent stars' motion are relatively large and rapid compared to those of other known types of planets. One of the best-known hot Jupiters is . Discovered in 1995, it was the first extrasolar planet found orbiting a Sun-like star. has an orbital period of about 4 days. General characteristics Though there is diversity among hot Jupiters, they do share some common properties. * Their defining characteristics are their large masses and short orbital periods, spanning 0.36–11.8 Jupiter masses and 1.3–111 Earth days. The mass ...
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