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Detecting Distant Planets with Space Telescope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2017

Thornton Page
Thornton Page*
Affiliation:
NASA Johnson Space Center, Code SN, Houston, Texas 77058

Abstract

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In 1981 and in 1984, I offered at the University of Houston, CLC, a course on Space Telescope, the first of its kind. The 22 graduate students were assigned research projects of their own choosing designed for ST. Several chose the detection of planets of other stars, showing the popularity of the search for extraterrestrial life. Space Telescope's six instruments can be used for this purpose in several ways, and the students, most of them scientists and engineers at the NASA Johnson Space Center, proposed to use most of these after ST is launched in 1986 or 1987. The student proposals require a significant fraction of ST observing time over a period of five to ten years, indicating the over-subscription that faces the ST Science Institute. In this paper, I summarize the capability of ST instruments, and recount the techniques likely to be most effective in using them to detect planets of other stars.

Type
Section II. The Search for Other Planetary Systems
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 112: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Recent Developments , 1985 , pp. 85 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1985 

References

1. “Scientific Research with the Space Telescope,” Longair & Warner, NASA CP-2111, MSFC, 1979, (IAU Symposium #54), 327 pp.Google Scholar
2. “The Space Telescope Observatory,” Hall, Don, Ed., ST Sci Inst, NASA CP-2244, 1982 (IAU Commission 44), 134 pp.Google Scholar
3. “Space Telescope,” Thornton Page, Dudley Observatory Reports, No. 16, pp. 18–41, Sept, 1982.Google Scholar
4. “Stars of Variable Proper Motion,” Sarah Lippincott, Space Science Reviews, 22, pp. 153–189, 1978; updated in “Status of the Sproul Astrometric Plate Series on the Nearest Stars in Search for Planetary Systems,” Sarah Lippincott, Bulletin of AAS, 14, p. 627, 1982 Google Scholar