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.
Les Mouettes
Lycée Marcelin Berthelot Saint-Maur-des-Fossés – Île-de-France France 16 years old 3 / 3
KELT-3b
KELT-3b project description:
On January 22, 2023, at 23:20 CET, the satellite Cheops captured the exoplanet KELT-3b. This latter had already been discovered by the KELT survey nine years earlier in 2012. Since exoplanets are outside the solar system, it makes it more difficult to find them. Therefore, for this experience, we relied on transit photometry as one of the methods to detect them. We referred to the exoplanet transit known as the measurement of “dimming in the light coming from the star when the exoplanet passes in between the star and the telescope”. Based on these data represented by a light curve, we could determine the size of KELT-3b as well as its orbital period, its orbital distance, its temperature, and its composition to compare them to the Earth and the other planets in the solar system. These answers were to complete the missing information in the KELT-3b case file. The understanding of KELT-3b will be helpful for the search for habitable planets or living species outside of the Earth.
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