Scientists have found a planetary system some 5,000 light years away, which has two planets, resembling Jupiter and Saturn, orbiting around a star. Three Korean scientists contributed to the ``microlensing'' project, which can lead to more discoveries of planets like Earth and Mars.
/ Courtesy of Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute |
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
South Korean scientists played an instrumental role in finding a planetary system that closely resembles our solar system.
The international coalition of 69 scientists and amateur astronomers found a star about the half the weight of the sun and two orbiting planets that resembled Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, about 5,000 light years away from the Earth.
The discovery is considered an important mark in finding other planetary systems. Furthermore, it can possibly be used in detecting Earth-like planets, said Prof. Han Cheong-ho of Chungbuk National University, one of main authors of the research.
``What we are going to do is to set up two more observatories in the Southern hemisphere to find planets that are similar in size with Earth,'' Han said during a phone interview Friday. ``It will be very difficult, but we cannot just count on luck. If the odds are one in a million, then we will search through more than a million stars.''
The international research was conducted by 69 scientists and amateur astronomers including three Korean scientists, Han and Park Byeong-gon and Lee Chung-uk of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The main author is Scott Gaudi of the Ohio State University, where Han earned his Ph.D. in 1997.
The researchers first became aware of the star, codenamed OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, in 2006. Then they observed it from various observatory points around the world.
Han, who has been engaged in this field since 2002, complied and analyzed the collected data in Mt. Lemmon, Arizona.
Stars, like the sun, are relatively easy to spot because they are big and shiny. But planets like Earth and Mars are much harder to see from a great distance because in most cases they do not emit visible light by themselves and they are smaller than stars.
The new method used by Han and his fellow researcher is called ``microlensing.'' When a heavy object like a star or a planet traveling across the universe gets in the line of the sight of another star, the gravity of the nearer star, or planet, can bend and magnify the light coming from the more distant one.
This effect is similar to that of a bottle of water distorting and magnifying objects behind it, and ``What we are doing is searching for the `bottles' in the universe,'' Han said.
In the case of the newly discovered planetary system, the star displayed the magnifying effect for about one month. Each of the two revolving planets showed the same effect for about one day each. ``By analyzing the pattern of the water bottle effect, we can calculate how big is the planet and how far it is from the star,'' the 42-year-old professor said.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr
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