Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths

Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths — page 9
Marcy's block of time to use the telescope A long night of planet hunting stretches ahead He will finish at 5 30 in the morning For the next three days Marcy will sleep during the day play tennis late in the afternoon eat a quick dinner and then go to the telescope control room at 7 00 p m He keeps his fingers crossed that the good weather will hold Telescope time is costly and the instrument is sensitive When the weather is bad the telescope shuts down for the night Tonight Marcy is excited maybe he will find another distant planet orbiting a star like our Sun Maybe this time the planet will be similar to Earth the kind of planet most likely to sustain life Intelligent Life Beyond Our Solar System Marcy and his former co worker Dr Paul Butler are world leaders in planet hunting Since 1995 Marcy has helped detect 500 of the 900 planets found outside our solar system which are known as extrasolar planets As the team developed more and more precise search techniques Marcy came closer to his dream of finding a small rocky Earth like planet one that might harbor life In 2006 the team announced one of the smallest planets discovered at that time The planet which orbits the star Gliese 876 is seven to eight times more