Juan Carlos Muñoz

When an exoplanet passes between its host star and us, the star's light is filtered by the exoplanet's atmosphere, each molecule leaving a different imprint.

Similarly, during a lunar #eclipse like the one on Nov 7-8, sunlight passes through the Earth's atmosphere before reaching the Moon. We can thus use lunar eclipses to find clues of life on Earth, which will hopefully help us identify life elsewhere. I wrote about it here:

➡️ https://www.eso.org/public/blog/is-there-life-on-earth/

#astronomy #astrodon
📷 ESO/M. Kornmesser

Nov 7, 2022 at 12:36pmWeb
Show threadStephanie en ChileNov 7, 2022
@astro_jcm this is fascinating! 🤯
Show threadmagicalgoddessNov 7, 2022
@astro_jcm wow! 🤩
Show threadJake 🇺🇸 🇵🇱 Dec 1, 2022
@astro_jcm The problem I see is that there must be billions, maybe trillions of exoplanets that will not pass their star but 1 day in a year or even 100 years and if the solar system is even one degree off axis those planets will never eclipse/traverse their stars when viewed from Earth. That they are finding them at all is super-amazing!
Show threadJuan Carlos MuñozDec 1, 2022
@jake_snowflake Yup! It's funny because even though it's completely true that only a tiny fraction of planets transit their star (from our point of view), it's actually easier to find lots of planets this way than with other methods. There are dedicated telescopes monitoring large patches of the sky with hundreds of thousands of stars, looking for tiny dips in their brightness. 1/2
Show threadJuan Carlos MuñozDec 1, 2022
@jake_snowflake Other methods to discover exoplanets, like the radial velocity one where you measure the tug that a planet exerts on its star, or directly imaging an exoplanet, requires you to point to a specific star. All methods are complementary though; for instance, it's common to use the radial velocity method to confirm if a brightness dip is due to a transiting planet or not. 2/2
Show threadJake 🇺🇸 🇵🇱 Dec 1, 2022
@astro_jcm Yes, and combined you have have a very high degree of certainty of their existence. One thing is almost for certain is that we live in a very "active" universe with likely millions if not billions of planets that could support life (even types we could hardly imagine). There could be millions of iterations of non-water non-carbon based life forms out there. I find all of this fascinating. I'm endlessly taking astrophotos.