CHEOPS: CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite
CHEOPS is an ESA space mission that has been travelling since the end of 2019. Using a small optical telescope with an aperture of 32 cm on board the satellite, it measures individual stars from a low Earth orbit where planets have already been found. The high-precision transit measurements make it possible to precisely determine the radius of the planets and detect other planets in the system.
Cheops (DLR)
by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), November 2024 A planet’s atmosphere, that means the gas layer that envelopes it, provides us with valuable information about the...
The Spectrum of light and what it tells us by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), July 2024 One fundamental and essential tool in the study of exoplanets is the study of light...
by Ludwig Scheibe & Tanja Schumann (TU Berlin), September 2022Credit: nasa.govDefinition: The planets of our Solar System are ordered a certain way: closest to the...
How it works: Like the radial velocity method, this technique makes use of the fact that star and planet both orbit a shared center of mass. For systems that we look at...
by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), October 2024 Without a lot of prior knowledge, upon hearing "discovering planets around other stars" most people would probably think...
How it works: According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are merged into one quantity called spacetime. Under this theory, massive objects...
by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), October 2024 Imaging an exoplanet directly is a difficult process that is only doable in a select few cases. Thus, we need indirect...
by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), September 2024 Because the direct imaging of planets around other stars is only feasible in select cases, the question arises: How, then,...
by Ludwig Scheibe (TU Berlin), October 2024 On the grand size scale between massive gas giants and smaller super-Earths, we find a class of medium-sized planets: Worlds...
