Microlensing for planetary detection

  When doing the Strange Worlds cart, we talk about detecting exoplanets using their apparent interference with the intensity of the light we can measure from their sun, or by the "wobble" they induce on that star by the point of a shared gravitational influence. A form of the lensing effect that was featured on our previous black holes planetarium show is also a viable means. In this report, that technique is explained along with relating how it was used to detect a body orbiting an extremely faint stellar object: a brown dwarf. And look who is the author of the article.

"When astronomers detect new exoplanets they typically do so using one of two techniques. First, there’s the famous transit technique, which looks for slight dips in light as a planet passes in front of its host star, and second is the radial velocity technique, which senses the motion of a star due to the gravitational pull of its planet. But then there is gravitational microlensing, the chance magnification of the light from a distant star by the mass of a foreground star and its planets due to the distortion in the fabric of spacetime. While this technique sounds almost improbable, it is so accurate that every detection skips nominating planets as candidates and immediately verifies them as bona-fide worlds."

posted by David