Exoplanet Trifecta: Seeing and Believing 🤩👀🔭🪐🪐🪐
- Public Event
Watch Episode 13 of Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers!
Have you ever wondered what it's like to discover a brand-new world? In the last few decades, we've found over 5,000 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets—and there are likely millions, if not billions, more! Join Dr. Jessie Christiansen, Lead Scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Archive at Caltech IPAC as she interviews the brilliant minds behind the discovery of new planets in "Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers." Hear about their eureka moments and their favorite fictional planets, which Jessie will match to their closest real-world counterparts in the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Come explore the cosmos, one exoplanet at a time!
About this episode:
Exoplanet Trifecta: Seeing and Believing 🤩👀🔭🪐🪐🪐
What is it like to spend eight years chasing down hundreds of possible planets that turn out to be false positives, and then discover three planets at once? It takes a special kind of believer—and skeptic—to find planets using the direct imaging method. Dr. Bruce Macintosh, Director of the University of California Observatories, describes how he became a believer in the HR 8799 system. Also in this episode: Bruce's LEAST favorite exoplanet!