The answer to the oldest and most often asked question of mankind:
"Are we alone in the universe?"
"The discovery of life on
another planet is potentially one of the most important scientific advances
of this century, let alone this decade, and it would have enormous
philosophical implications."
- National Research Council
Get your place in history! It never was easier...
This site is dedicated to the search for a
second earth
You'll find here always the latest news what concerns
habitable extrasolar planets. Since this is one of the oldest questions of
mankind you should bookmark this site and add this site to your favorites.
Carnegie Institution of Science: "There could be one hundred billion
Earth-like planets in our galaxy...". and Berkeley says: "Earth-Sized Alien
Planets May Be Surprisingly Common" or "25% of Sun-like stars have
Earth-like planets.. (and)...there could be even more Earth-size planets"
The more planets there are the greater the odds that
life exists somewhere else in
the universe.
Planets todays astronomy thinks are worth a second look - but don't get too excited because none of these pocesses a moon of the size of our moon (to our knowledge today) which is essential for live on a planet:
Read also: Exoplanets on the cheap
GJ 1214b
Kepler-22b .
It orbits its star every 290 days.
Keppler 22d
Gliese 581g (newer investigations seem to show that 581g is not existant)
HD85512b
Gliese 581d
HD 40307g
Gliese 163c
Tau Ceti f
Tau Ceti e
KOI -351
Kepler 186f
GJ 832c
Kepler 283c
GJ180c, GJ180b
Kepler 61b
GJ 422b
GJ3293c
Kepler 298d
Kapteyn b
Kepler 174d
Kepler 296f
GJ 682c
KOI-4427b
Kepler 62f, Kepler 62e
Keppler 296e, Keppler 296f
Kepler 438b
Kepler 442b
Kepler 443b
Kepler 440b
Kepler 444(c,d)
These exoplanets are considered to be in the habitable zone and have a rocky composition:
Trappist-1 is supposed to posses 6 exoplanets in the habitable zone (7 total)
LHS 1140b
Ross 128b
(Some are stll candidates. Some seem to be non existant.)
For the first time an atmosphere has been detected on a planet 1.6 times the mass of Earth and 1.4 times the radius. The planet GJ 1132b orbits a red-dwarf star 39 light-years away and is classified as a super-Earth.
It seems GJ 1132b has an atmosphere that is opaque to infrared but transparent to other wavelengths. It is assumed that the atmosphere may be rich in oxygen and methane. It could be a water planet with a steam atmosphere.
How and why the search for extrasolar
planets started you can read here.
Simbad database, Strasbourg
CDS Portal, simultaneous search in
Simbad, Aladin and VizieR
The exoplanets catalog maintained
by Jean Schneider (CNRS-LUTH, Paris Observatory)
The Transiting Planets (Frédéric
Pont)
Solstation becomes more and more useful
Still useful: Exoplanets Rising: Astronomy and Planetary Science at the Crossroads (March 29 - April 2, 2010)
keep an eye on this site: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1898942
Software:
The following is mostly in C++ :
Celestia The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
State of the art modeling of stellar and planetary atmospheres: http://www.hs.uni-hamburg.de/EN/For/ThA/phoenix/index.html
FARGO, Solves Navier-Stokes and continuity equations for a Keplerian disk subject to the gravity of the central object and that of embedded protoplanets http://fargo.in2p3.fr/ and http://fargo.in2p3.fr/spip.php?article1
EXOMOL: http://www.exomol.com/
MESS (Multi-purpose Exoplanet Simulation System): http://messthecode.com/ and http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.4917
http://www.compadre.org/OSP/items/detail.cfm?ID=10156
Open_exoplanet_catalogue: https://github.com/hannorein/open_exoplanet_catalogue
Fits Liberator is now a stand alone application (Photoshop since Version 3.0 no more required) pdf here, downloads here
Photometric Software for Transits (PhoS-T) rather archaiac: only available per email-!
Habitable exoplanets: http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog and http://phl.upr.edu/
Free astrophysics software with source code (No comment on quality)
GPS-library and AA+ v1.45 A class framework for Computational Astronomy etc
Fits Liberator is now a stand alone application (Photoshop since Version 3.0 no more required) pdf here, downloads here
Photometric Software for Transits (PhoS-T) rather archaiac: only available per email-!
Astronomical Image Browsers
- DS9 is SAO's astronomical data visualization application (runs on many different platforms, displays most standard depths). Online reference manual.
- EXOFAST Fits transit and/or R/V data (http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.5798)
- NASA Goddard's FV program displays both FITS images and tables. Microsoft Windows 95 or NT or Unix platform.
- The Java-based Horizon Image Data Browser was developed at NCSA (using WCSLIB).
- ISIS (INTEGRATED SPECTROGRAPHIC INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE) for processing spectral data
- The European Southern Observatory's SKYCAT tool not only tracks in WCS (can overplot catalogs retrieved over the network).
- SAOtng, by Eric Mandel at SAO, evolved from SAOimage (based on the IRAF Ximtool). Use of the X Public Access mechanism makes it extensible.
- SAOimage, originally written by Mike vanHilst of SAO, - revised by Doug Mink - to display WCS information with FITS or IRAF images, including plate solutions
- WCSLIB subroutine library. It is available by anonymous ftp from ftp://cfa-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/gsc/SAOimage/. The WCS subroutines are used in ds9, SKYCAT and SAOtng.
- IPAC's Skyview (no capital V) program can deal with WCS
- Doug Mink's Skymap has extensive overlay capabilities, rudimentary image display.
Other
Radiative Transfer Code for a Plane Parallel Multiple Scattering/ Absorbing Atmosphere and Kernel Functions for Radiative Transfer in Spectral Lines in C/C++ code. Homepage: http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/
Astronomy Software
Important addres for all who are interested in games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Soon you'll find much more code here ( got to scan my hard disks...)