Kyiv Internet Telescope - Science
Science
Research of the stars with planets which pass apparent star disk (transiting exoplanets).
The transit method based on a detection star brightness decrease during a passing of planet in front of its disk. Observed brightness system decries when planet pass star disk and its volume depend of the relative sizes star and planet. Method allows to determine a planet radius, and orbit period and its inclination what together with method of radial velocity gives us opportunity to calculate planet mass.
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International project БЂњThe DWARF project: Eclipsing binaries - precise clocks to discover exoplanetsБЂќ
Observational campaign on the search for planets around of eclipsing binaries systems. Project include network of North hemisphere telescopes with apertures from 25 to 200 cm from more as 20 observatories involved.
Principal investigator of the project are Theodor Pribulla from Astronomical Institute Slovak Academy of Sciences Tatranska Lomnica (http://www.astro.sk/~pribulla/).
Scientific background: system brightness decries when a brighter star shade with another star. Moment of the time of the glow minima is named primary eclipse. The second eclipse has smaller amplitude when the star with a lower brightness pass behind a brighter star. It is usually can be observed too. If there is the planet in this system, stars under this planet gravity will shift relative to the mass centre of the stars-planet system and they will follow along the modified orbit. Therefore minima eclipse moments will vary constantly.
The goal of the project is the research of a displacements periodicity in these minima on a base of exact determination of the momentБЂ™s eclipse minima.
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Study of cometary activity at large heliocentric distances
Small bodies from the outskirts of the Solar system are considered to be relatively unmodified remnants of the early stage of the solar system formation. Therefore, they can retain information about the abundance of volatile materials in comet progenitors and the local physical conditions at the stage of their origin. Being scattered in the inner region of the Solar System, some of small bodies become considerably active developing as comets at heliocentric distances larger than 4 AU.
This phenomenon cannot be explained by classical theories.There are different hypotheses considering different physical mechanisms, which can trigger physical activity at such large heliocentric distances. The monitoring of dynamically new comets, when they move far from the Sun, can reveal various patterns of the development of the cometary activity and provide data for studying the brightness evolution and dust composition of their coma. Furthermore, this is also a means to discriminate between different physical mechanisms triggering and sustaining the physical activity of comets.