Category: Society News

On Friday 30th September 2022 at the ExoClock 2 day meeting held at University College London, CMHASD trustees Martin Crow & Simon Dawes were awarded certificates for their impressive contribution to the ExoClock Project. 

ExoClock is a project to monitor the ephemerides of transiting exoplanets by the ARIEL Ephemerides Working Group. 

ARIEL is a space telescope (Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission) that was selected by ESA as part of its Cosmic Vision plan and is ESA'S next science mission that will focus on the nature of planets orbiting stars in other systems.  It will be ESA's fourth medium-class science mission to be launched in 2029.

Both Simon and Martin have contributed over 50 exoplanet observations each to ExoClock and more are yet to come. 

Their certificates were presented to them by Anastasia Kokori, Coordinator of the ExoClock project & Professor Giovanna Tinetti, Principal Investigator of the Ariel mission. 

Congratulations Martin & Simon. Well done!

Martin Crow receiving his certificate.

Simon Dawes receiving his certificate.

You can view some of Simon & Martin's observations on the CMHASD ExoClock Project page.

One more for the ExoClock Project by Simon Dawes of HAT-P-29b also known as Surt.  Surt is the ruler of Muspelheim and the fire giants there in Norse mythology. At Ragnarok, the end of the world, he will lead the attack on our world and destroy it in flames.

See https://www.iau.org/public/themes/naming_exoplanets/

Taken from a few days ago; this is member Simon Dawes 48th accepted transit for the ExoClock project of exoplanet TrES-3b.  TrES-3b is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits a G-type star GSC 03089-00929. It has an orbital period of just 31 hours, is nearly twice the mass of Jupiter and is 0.02282 AU from its star.

The planet TrES-3b is named Umbäässa. The name was selected in the NameExoWorlds campaign by Liechtenstein during the 100th anniversary of the IAU. In the local dialect of southern Liechtenstein, Umbäässa is a small and barely visible ant.

Its discovery was announced in 2007.  It is the 3rd transiting planet found by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey. It was discovered in the constellation Hercules about 10 degrees west of the star Vega.  If you look at the curve you can see that it doesn't have a flat bottom which means from our viewpoint the planet occults the star right on its edge - a grazing occultation.

Also measured by Simon is the transit of exoplanet WASP-60b.

WASP-60b orbits at a distance of 8.25 million km from its G1-type star, taking 4.3 days to go round its orbit in the constellation of Pegasus. The system is a distance of 400 parsecs away from us.