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Maunakea has made several firsts. In 1999, W. M. Keck Observatory made the first detection of an exoplanet transiting its host star. The first direct images of exoplanets came in 2008 when the Gemini and Keck telescopes captured four planets in orbit around a star known as HR 8799. Each are more massive than Jupiter. Peter Michaud, a spokesman for Gemini, said a direct image of a planet in another solar system was long seen as the “holy grail.” “The new challenge is to image smaller and smaller worlds,” he said. Michaud said the discovery was possible because of the observing conditions on Maunakea. “You need to have a fairly bright star, you need the technology like adaptive optics, but you really need the exquisite atmospheric conditions to be able to use it effectively,” he said. After a quarter century of exoplanet research, a major question SUPPORTING ASTRONOMY AND TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1983 We Salute Our Past and Present Clients: United Kingdom Infrared Telescope UH 2.2 Meter Telescope Gemini Telescope Canada France-Hawaii Telescope NASA Infrared Telescope Facility W.M. Keck Observatory Subaru Telescope Smithsonian Submillimeter Array James Clerk Maxwell Telescope 808-935-9029 456-a Kekuanaoa St. • Hilo, HI 96720 • remains: Do any of them have life? The mere numbers suggests so. But the proof is in the pudding. “We are not in the age of spaceships where we can travel and take a look at the soil,” Moutou said. “We still have to rely on the light which travels from Hawaii Tribune-Herald there to here and the study this light and interpret what it is.” She was referring to spectroscopy, the method of analyzing light reflected off an object to determine its characteristics. “Chemicals or molecules in the atmosphere absorb some of the light,” Moutou said. “And so we can have the spectrum of the atmosphere of the planet.” Those show up as lines on the light spectrum, representing a barcode of sorts for the planet. Such data has been recovered from a few exoplanets that orbit too close to their star to be in the habitable zone. While life might take different forms on different worlds, Moutou said what astronomers want to generally look for is an imbalance of gasses, such as an abundance of oxygen; water molecules and light wavelengths that could be produced from photons reflecting off a surface covered in vegetation. “Life which is everywhere, which has a common signature, and which has impacted the atmosphere 24 Sunday, December 24, 2017 EXOPLANETS From page 23 HOLLYN JOHNSON/Tribune-Herald Claire Moutou, resident astronomer at Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, sits in her office in Waimea. See EXOPLANETS Page 25


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