Canadian planet-hunting telescope celebrates 10 years in space

In the search for planets orbiting around other stars (so called 'exoplanets'), telescopes like Kepler, and the upcoming James Webb Telescope and TESS are getting most of the headlines these days, but Canada has made its own contribution to the hunt, and our very own space telescope — MOST — is celebrating its 10th anniversary today.

MOST stands for 'Microvariability and Oscillations of STars', and the telescope focuses on a star for a long period of time (up to 2 months), watching for very tiny changes in the star's light. These minuscule variations and oscillations give astronomers an idea of what's going on inside the star — a field of study called 'asteroseismology' or 'stellar seismology' — in the same way as reading earthquake tremors here on Earth can tell geologists and seismologists what's going on inside our planet.

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One very cool application that MOST wasn't specifically intended for, but which it kind of 'fell' into, was looking for exoplanets. Because the telescope can observe a star for a long period of time, like Kepler does, its sensitive instruments can pick up planet transits — the characteristic 'dip' in the brightness of a star when a planet passes in front of it.

According to University of British Columbia astronomy professor Dr. Jaymie Matthews, who heads up the MOST project, so far, the telescope has helped to discover and confirm two different planets.

"One of them (55 Cancri e) is this super-exotic, super-Earth that goes around its star in 17 hours and 41 minutes," Matthews said, according to The Canadian Press.

If that name — 55 Cancri e — sounds familiar, it's not surprising. It made headlines last October, as it could be a 'diamond planet' — a searing-hot, carbon-rich world that could have a thick layer of diamond under a graphite surface. According to Matthews, MOST's observations helped them figure out the planet's size, mass and density, which is what ultimately led them to that conclusion.

"The other (HD 97658 b) is a planet that may have a rocky, maybe solid metallic, core and liquid mantle atmosphere," he said in the interview.

One of the truly remarkable things about this telescope, nicknamed the "Humble Space Telescope" by its creators (because it's the smallest space telescope in orbit), is that not only was it launched well before any of the other planet-hunting space telescopes (beating NASA's Kepler by over six year and France's COROT mission by over three years), but it's still going strong today, even though it was given a projected lifespan of about 18 months!

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Canada's contributions to astronomy and space sciences have already been incredibly valuable to the scientific community, as we help to track asteroids, search the atmospheres of distant planets for water, build telescopes to investigate the early universe, and even help to build the largest telescope in the world... and that's just scratching the surface. Check out the astronomy or space-science department of any Canadian university and you'll find dedicated scientists that have already made amazing discoveries, and you'll find both scientists and students that have many amazing discoveries in their future.

Go Canada!

(Images courtesy: The Canadian Press/Wikimedia Commons)

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