~ A spectrograph to rule them all ~ First light for ESPRESSO ~
1 - Data of the first light of ESPRESSO - Credits ESO
No, I'm not talking about the famous coffee. The European space agency of the austral observatory has published a press release to announce the first light of ESPRESSO (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations.
This new machine is able to measure much more accurately than its predecessor (HARPS), and will allow us to observe small variations in the light spectre of the stars produced by its orbiting planets. The two spectrographs use the radial velocity method that detects changes in the light of the star when it is wobbled by the gravitational force of the planets that orbit it.
“This success is the result of the work of many people over 10 years. ESPRESSO isn’t just the evolution of our previous instruments like HARPS, but it will be transformational, with its higher resolution and higher precision. And unlike earlier instruments it can exploit the VLT’s full collecting power — it can be used with all four of the VLT Unit Telescopes at the same time to simulate a 16-metre telescope. ESPRESSO will be unsurpassed for at least a decade — now I am just impatient to find our first rocky planet!”
The lead scientist for ESPRESSO, Francesco Pepe from the University of Geneva in Switzerland,
The HARPS has already left us a few discoveries since its first light in 2002. Among those discoveries, it found a star located at 127 light years orbited by at least five planets. The star HD 10180.
Thanks to the HARPS scientists were also able to discover the first planet orbiting a star almost identical to our Sun in the star cluster Messier 67.
2 - Artistic impression of an exoplanet orbiting a star in the Messier 67 cluster - Credits ESO
Another achievement of the HARPS was to find the first planet in the habitable zone of the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Although this star is a red dwarf, it is believed that in Proxima b there could be liquid water on its surface. The zone of habitability in this type of stars, much colder, is closer than in a star of the type of our sun and Proxima b is so close to its star that it orbits in just eleven days.
3 - Artistic impression of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri - Credits ESO
Also thanks to this spectrograph were discovered a few years ago, 2012 to be more precise, three super-Earths around a star located at 64 light years away. This star called HD 40307 is slightly less massive than our Sun and the planets that the ESO scientists discovered have 4.2, 6.7 and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth. The planet with the highest orbital period of the three gives a tour around its star in just 20.4 days, far from the 365 days it takes our Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun.
3 - Artistic representation of the three Super-Earths orbiting HD 40307- Credits ESO
After this brief review of the successes of HARPS we can only be very optimistic about what the new ESPRESSO can find, besides being able to study the physical constants of nature and see if they have changed since the universe was young.
References
First Light for ESPRESSO — the Next Generation Planet Hunter 6 December 2017
1, Q1, Q2
http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/news/eso1739/?lang
2
http://www.eso.org/public/spain/news/eso1402/
3
http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/news/eso1629/
4
http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/news/eso0819/
Gift-thanks to @markperandin
Let's take care of the pale blue dot
Enjoy your day. Enjoy your life.
Gift-thanks to @stellabelle
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