Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search facts for kids
The Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search, or SWEEPS, was a special project to find planets outside our solar system. It happened in 2006. SWEEPS used the famous Hubble Space Telescope to watch 180,000 stars for seven days. Its goal was to discover new extrasolar planets, also called exoplanets.
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Where Did SWEEPS Look for Planets?
The stars that SWEEPS watched were all in a special place called the Sagittarius-I Window. Imagine our Milky Way galaxy as a giant flat disk with a big bulge in the middle. This bulge is packed with many stars.
Usually, thick clouds of dust block our view of these stars. But the Sagittarius-I Window is like a clear "window" through this dust. It gives us a rare, clear look at the stars in the very center of our galaxy. This window is found in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. The stars SWEEPS studied are about 27,000 light years away from Earth.
What Planets Did SWEEPS Discover?
SWEEPS found sixteen new planets. These planets orbit their stars very quickly. They take between 0.6 and 4.2 days to complete one trip around their star.
Scientists noticed that they did not find any planets that took less than 1.2 days to orbit their star. They called these "ultra-short period planets" (USPPs). These super-fast planets were only found orbiting smaller stars. This might mean that bigger stars could destroy planets that orbit too closely. Or, perhaps planets cannot move as close to larger stars.
Two of the discovered planets, SWEEPS-4 and SWEEPS-11, orbited stars that were quite different from others nearby. This made it easier for scientists to study them more closely. They used a method called the radial velocity method to figure out how much these planets weighed.
Related Space Discoveries
See also
In Spanish: Búsqueda de Planetas Extrasolares Eclipsantes en la Ventana de Sagitario para niños
