Don’t miss the Monthly Meeting on Friday, June 17!
7:00 pm for Pizza, 7:30 pm for our speaker, Makaila Jennings, who will give a presentation on “How Distance Affects the Double Dip Transit Photometry Method’s Ability to Detect Exoplanets.”
In our quest of whether there is life outside of our solar system, the focus has been on finding planets known as Super-Earths with Earth-like qualities suitable for life, but large enough for us to see. The purpose of this study is to see how distance affects the double-dip transit photometry method of detecting exoplanets. The procedure is to set up a star-planet system in a large four-foot black box with a color-changing and intensity-changing LED bulb to simulate the star. A Hot Jupiter (foam ball) is suspended from a rotating motor, orbiting close to the star, and a suspended Super-Earth (a bead) orbiting further from the star at three different distances.
Makaila Jennings is a rising High school Junior. She is the winner of the 2021 Alabama Junior Academy of Science paper competition and she represented the State of Alabama at the 60th National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in Albuquerque, NM. Her research is on “How Distance Affects the Double Dip Transit Photometry Method’s Ability to Detect Exoplanets.” Makaila is also the recipient of the 2020 Angela Award from the National Science Teachers Association.