Project Gallery 2023
Secondary students from across Europe became exoplanet detectives with ESA and used Cheops satellite data to uncover the mysteries of two exoplanet targets: KELT-3b and TOI-560c.
Explore the projects below.
RTG Nittenau
Regental-Gymnasium Nittenau Nittenau – Bayern Germany 16 years old, 17 years old, 18 years old, 19 years old 26 / 7
TOI-560c
TOI-560c project description:
I told the students of my physics class of this project and they haven been “on fire” from the first second on. Many of them only attend this class because they want know more about astrophysics (which will take place in the next schoolyear). In our lessions we startet to work on many of the given classroom resources and finaly “hacked” the exoplanets. It was the first time, the students worked with real scientific data.
TOI-560c Results and Analysis
Missing Data in the Case File of TOI-560c:
Radius of the planet: 2,4 times the radius of Earth
Orbital periode: 18,88 days
Distance to its star: 0,125 AU
Desity: 2,563 g/cm³
Calculations and explanations are in the PDF documents
TOI-560c Conclusions
TOI-560c is a hot Neptun with a very low distance to its star (0,125AE – about 1/3 of the distance Mercury – sun). Its orbital periode is 18,88 days. Despite its relativly small star, TOI-560c is too near to it .This is why the temperature is too high to contain life as we know it, because there is only watervapor and proteins would be destroyed. Also the radiation would be very high. Because of the high density (for a gas planet) it is likely that there is a stone core.
Despite its low distance to its star(~1/3 Mercury-Sun), the temperature (225°C) is only slightly above the average temperature of Mercury and it is colder than Venus (extreme greenhouse effect). The density of TOI-560c is higher than the densities of all the gas planets in our solar system but lower than those of the stone planets.
Supporting files:
