Planet Earth
International Astronomical Union WGSN

Exoplanets Experiments

Themes

Photometry Experiment.

Evaluation of real astronomical data.

Model Making, Here we collect what’s behind the analog experiment and what additional features are makable.

Introduction

At the telescope, exoplanets are detected by photometric, photographic, or spectroscopic methods.

If you can’t photograph the planet directly, it can sometimes be detected by briefly shading or dimming the light of its host star (making a so-called transit), or by using its gravity to cause the host star to move rhythmically toward or away from us.

Two Transits of Venus in front of the Sun.

Analog experiment: We reproduce the photometric detection of a transit here in our school experiment: We let a dark body pass around a lamp, measure only the light of the lamp and notice, even if it shines on our detector all the time, that it is not always equally bright

Tested in German Schools