Planetary Research

What is the Model of Accretion Theory, and what are your thoughts related to this topic?

small clumps of dust to gradually form planetesimals. These planetesimals accumulate more
materials and form protoplanets. These protoplanets are built up until they form planets within
the solar system. The Sun transits through a dense interstellar cloud and emerges surrounded by a
dusty, gaseous envelope. The problem is getting the cloud to form the planets.Terrestrial planets
can form in a reasonable amount of time, but gas planets take too long to form. The accretion
model, that the Earth and the other terrestrial planets were formed from meteoric material, was
proposed by Otto Schmidt in 1944, followed by the protoplanet theory. by William McCrea
(1960) and finally the catch theory by Michael Woolfson.

Discuss the detection methods of discovering exoplanets (extra-solar planets). You will
need to cover direct imaging and four(4) indirect methods of discovering exoplanets.

Indirect methods are mainly radical velocity, astrometry and transit methods. The majority of planetary
detections to date have been accomplished using radial velocity techniques in ground-based telescopes.
For this method, light from a star must be passed through a prism to split it into spectra, much like water
droplets in the atmosphere split sunlight into rainbows. As the spectrum increases, a solid black line
appears above the color. These spectral lines correspond to the wavelengths of light that are absorbed by
the surface chemicals of the star that is the source of the light. Each element and molecule creates its own
chemical fingerprint through its own "spectral lines" at different wavelengths. They provide an indication
of how much of that element is present in an object and under what conditions (temperature, pressure,
etc.). Another technique related to radial velocity detection is to measure star positions precisely so that
they can be detected directly without wobble. Such observations are called astrometry. They too are
constrained from the Earth's surface by the atmosphere. Nevertheless, this method was used in his 20th
century to try to detect planets around several nearby stars with large ground-based telescopes. No
evidence has been confirmed using modern methods.
 Planetary Research

Instead, the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope has been successfully
deployed on a few bodies to detect exoplanets. Used only for very close, low-mass stars (red dwarfs).
By examining these lines, you can tell which stars have large planets around them. A more promising way
to detect small worlds is to look for the dips in brightness that occur as they pass in front of their parent
stars. Such an array of celestial bodies is known as a transit. From Earth, both Mercury and Venus cross in
front of the Sun from time to time. When they do, they look like tiny black dots across the surface of the
light.
Such transits block a tiny fraction of the light. When a distant star is crossed by the equivalent of Jupiter,
1% of the star's light will be lost from view. Now using this method he has discovered more than 10
planets. By obtaining both transit velocity and radial velocity information, we can accurately determine
the planet's orbit and find the true mass and size of the planet.Direct imaging consists of taking direct
pictures of exoplanets. This is made possible by looking for light reflected from the planet's atmosphere at
infrared wavelengths. This is because the star is only about a million times brighter than a planet that
reflects light at infrared wavelengths, not a million times her (usually for visible wavelengths). One of the
most obvious advantages of direct imaging is that it is less prone to false alarms.Microlensing is a type of
gravitational lensing effect in which light from a background light source is bent by the gravitational field
of a foreground lens, producing a distorted, multiple, and/or bright image.

Compare and contrast exoplanets with the planets located in our solar system
 Planetary Research

Planets outside our solar system are called "exoplanets" and range in size from gas giants larger than
Jupiter to smaller rocky planets the size of Earth or Mars. They can get hot enough to boil or even freeze
metal. They can orbit the star so closely that a "year" lasts only a few days. It can orbit two suns at the
same time. Some exoplanets are sunless rogues, wandering the galaxy in eternal darkness. All planets in
the two systems have nearly circular orbits. Also, there are giant planets around both planetary systems.

What is the Goldilocks Zone?

The term "Goldilocks zone" originated in the 1970s and specifically referred to regions around stars
where the temperature was "just right" for water to exist in liquid phase.

Sources:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Microlensing_exoplanets
https://www.universetoday.com/140341/what-is-direct-imaging/
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/How_to_find_an_extrasolar_planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_(astrophysics)#:~:text=The%20accretion%20model%20that%20
Earth,capture%20theory%20of%20Michael%20Woolfson.