The Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project

[alfa015]

Hi all!

We are looking for more observatories and amateur astronomers who might want to join the project.

The Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project is a worldwide network of amateur astronomers searching for new potentially habitable exoplanets. I am coordinating over 20 observatories located in 5 continents.

We are searching for habitable exoplanets around non-flare G, K and M-type stars located within 100 ly.

The stars we are monitoring already have known transiting exoplanets, but none of them are potentially habitable.

We are monitoring each star 24/7 for several months. By doing so, we believe that the chances of finding an exoplanet increase for particular targets. Moreover, we are focusing on stars closer than 100 light years because, on the one hand, the closest habitable exoplanets will be the first destinations of interstellar missions and, on the other, because very few nearby habitable exoplanets around G and K-type stars have been discovered: only 2 of them.

The number of potentially habitable exoplanets that we could discover is, in theory, around 25. This calculation was obtained by taking into account the number of non-flare stars within 100 light years and the percentage of them that should show transits in the habitable zone.

Each observatory observes the same star and, when the transit of a hypothetical habitable exoplanet becomes unlikely, we move to another star.

Within 100 light years, we only found 10 non-flare G, K and M-type stars with known transiting exoplanets not potentially habitable.

Big telescopes are not necessary, but CCD cameras with a resolution of at least 16 bits are advisable because we are searching for exoplanets that produce a change of brightness in the star of around 0.1%.

If you are interested, feel free to contact me.

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[alfa015]

Anybody interested?

Btw I was recently interviewed by Tony Darnell from Deep Astronomy: 

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