NEKAAL August Meeting: Exoplanet Watch: A Hand's On Demonstration

Name: NEKAAL August Meeting: Exoplanet Watch: A Hand's On Demonstration
Start: 2025-08-28T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-08-28T21:00:00-05:00
Location: Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

Schedule

Thu Aug 28 2025 at 07:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library | Topeka, KS

Everyone is welcome to join us for our August General Meeting at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library! This is a great time to connect with fellow members and learn more about our featured presentation. See below for information on the topic for this month's meeting:
In the past two decades or so, the study of extra-solar planets has emerged as one of the fastest growing and most exciting areas of astronomical research. Since the first exoplanet discovery in 1993 the field has progressed rapidly, to the point where astronomers are now able to not only detect planets around other stars but also analyze their physical properties. Transiting exoplanets, which pass in front of their star, are especially useful in this research, since by passing between their star and an observer, they yield a wealth of information about their surface and atmospheric composition, perhaps even revealing chemical evidence for life. Research of this type requires the largest and most powerful professional telescopes; however it has also opened up a niche for amateur astronomers. Time on those large telescopes is expensive and tightly controlled, thus it is imperative that observers have accurate ephemeris information about transiting exoplanets, to avoid "missing" the passage of the planet across the star. Amateurs and citizen scientists can provide this sort of information, either using original observations (which can be made using fairly modest equipment) or by analyzing data from one of several automated telescopes set up for exactly this purpose. In this presentation, we will demonstrate such an analysis. Using a dataset downloaded from the Exoplanet Watch website, we will measure the timing parameters of the transit, using Exoplanet Watch's Exotic software. We will then report our results to the AAVSO. If time permits, we will also discuss the prospects for doing transit analysis using original observations.