Exocomets sighted around distant stars

• Autores: Jesse Emspak
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3141, 2017, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Kepler finds planets by measuring the intensity of a star's light over time. When a planet passes in front of its host star, an event called a transit, the light dims slightly. The resulting "light curve"--a graph of brightness over several days--is symmetrical, with the light levels dropping and then rising again at equal rates. This symmetry arises because both planets and stars are spherical, but the transits found by Andrew Vanderburg at Harvard University and his colleagues were asymmetrical, meaning that whatever made them wasn't a sphere. The team turned to comets as possible culprits, because they release gas and dust from one side, creating long tails that stretch out into space.