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Recent Developments

In search of planet
Location: Surat
Working Principle of the exhibit
As far as we know till date that in this universe there is only one planet that is drenched with life ---- the Earth. The very obvious question that comes next is that “are we alone “? To answer this question a continuous haunt is on for potentially habitable planets using several handful of techniques. 

The most popular method is transit method. Almost 3000 exoplanets are detected via this. 

Working Principle: When an exoplanet passes between its star and Earth the star’s light might, at most, dim by only a few percents when observed from Earth. If this minute diming happened with a regular frequency astronomer might be able to infer the presence of an exoplanet around that star. 

Mode of display
An interactive exhibit demonstrating transit method used by the astronomers to find exoplanets. Passing of a planet between a star and Earth is termed as transit.

In this mechanical exhibit, a planet is revolving around a star (a light source). In its course of orbiting, the luminance of the light source used as the star has been recorded and the data has been plotted in a graph showing the periodic dimming of light as the planet passes between the star and the line of sight of the observer.