Eastbourne
Eastbourne, East Sussex BN20 9HT
UK
Title: Colours from Earths – Dr. Robert Fosbury
Lecturer: Dr. Robert Fosbury
Precis: Planets comparable in size to the Earth are beginning to be discovered within the habitable zone around stars beyond the Solar System. How are we going to study such tiny, distant objects? In this talk, I will discuss the use of planetary transits to investigate the nature of their atmospheres. We have been using a local analogue of a transiting planet, namely lunar eclipses, to develop the methods that will be needed to enable the next generation of large ground- and space-based telescopes to attempt this task on real exoplanets. Measuring the ‘colours’ [wavelengths] transmitted by their atmospheres will be key to detecting the presence of life.
Biography: Institue of Advanced Study Fellow at Durham University and Emeritus Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, Garching by Munchen, Germany