Imagine that you are studying a planet orbiting a sun-like star, 17.3 pc from the Earth....

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Imagine that you are studying a planet orbiting a sun-like star, 17.3 pc from the Earth. The planet is a large one, with a radius of 17,400 km, and orbiting in a circle 12.1 astronomical units from the star. A) If you want to get an optical image of the system and clearly separate out the light from the star and planet, what sort of telescope system would you need, and how large a telescope? B) What is the ratio of the brightness of the star divided by the brightness of the planet, at optical wavelengths? Do you think the planet can be imaged at these wavelengths? C) If instead you want to image the planet at infra-red wavelengths, at what wavelength should you observe to see the most flux from the planet? D) Imagine that the planet had a spherical moon, 1400 km in radius. This moon explodes into spherical dust grains, 1 each micro-metre in radius. What would be the total infra-red luminosity of all the dust-grains? Would this be detectable? Imagine that you are studying a planet orbiting a sun-like star, 17.3 pc from the Earth. The planet is a large one, with a radius of 17,400 km, and orbiting in a circle 12.1 astronomical units from the star. A) If you want to get an optical image of the system and clearly separate out the light from the star and planet, what sort of telescope system would you need, and how large a telescope? B) What is the ratio of the brightness of the star divided by the brightness of the planet, at optical wavelengths? Do you think the planet can be imaged at these wavelengths? C) If instead you want to image the planet at infra-red wavelengths, at what wavelength should you observe to see the most flux from the planet? D) Imagine that the planet had a spherical moon, 1400 km in radius. This moon explodes into spherical dust grains, 1 each micro-metre in radius. What would be the total infra-red luminosity of all the dust-grains? Would this be detectable?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

A To image the star and planet separately at a distance of 173 pc we would need a very large telesco... View the full answer