” If there are globes in the heaven similar to our earth, do we vie with them over who occupies the better portion of the universe For if their globes are nobler, we are not the noblest of rational creatures. Then how can all things be for man’s sake How can we be the masters of God’s handiwork” —Johannes Kepler, in a letter to Galileo (1610)
Matthews’ office is as chaotic as the ground station is spartan. The room bristles with trinkets. An X-Files trivia map hangs alongside posters for scientific conferences. A cardboard cut-out of the Lost in Space robot stands over a pile of scientific papers. Glow-in-the-dark alien heads rest atop classified reports about space missions. One is tempted to conclude that Canada’s premier space-science mission is being managed from the bedroom of a precocious child.
Fittingly, the most telescope is not much larger than the cheap “Tasco special” Matthews grew up using in Chatham, Ontario. The self-described “über-geeky junior-egghead nerd” would lug his white plastic telescope into the nearby Maple Leaf Cemetery to stargaze. “I’d be at the cemetery at midnight,” Matthews recalls, “and police would come by, doing their cruise. They’d see this silhouette. They’d find me, age eleven, and so of course they’d take me home.” As he laughs, Matthews’ head bobs beneath a large banner that reads “Mars Customs & Immigration: Please Have Your Ticket Ready.”
Rather than watching for wobbles, most detects what astronomers call “transits.” Just as a mosquito passing in front of a streetlight blocks the light ever so slightly, a planet passing between its star and Earth dims the amount of light reaching most. By measuring this minuscule reduction in light, the most team can estimate the size of the transiting planet, which in turn suggests whether it is terrestrial or not (larger planets tend to be gaseous, smaller planets rocky). most can also detect the amount of starlight that reflects off the planet. “If we can figure out how much light the planet is reflecting, we know what kind of atmosphere it has: does it have thick cloud cover or is it fairly clear” Matthews explains. “It really does astound me. We’re making measurements telling us what the clouds are like on a planet that we can’t even see, around a star 160 light years away.”
Though most was designed to monitor only one star at a time, Rainer Kuschnig, the team’s instrument scientist, has figured out how to track up to twenty nearby stars during each two-month pointing. Together with the extended mission, this will boost the number of stars the team studies into the hundreds. “If we were looking at the right star at the right time, we would be able to see a transit of an Earth-sized planet,” Matthews says. “The odds are not in our favour.” But for another couple months, at least, “We have the best chance. We’re it.”
” Let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself.” —Blaise Pascal (c. 1647)
In the heart of the City of Light, with stone foundations 27 metres deep, stands L’Observatoire de Paris. Founded in 1667, the Observatoire’s claims to fame include mapping the moon, early calculations of the speed of light, and hanging Foucault’s pendulum (the first easily observable proof that the Earth rotated). In 1876, the Observatoire moved its major observation equipment out to an old royal estate at Meudon. Today, it is planning a very different move—this time to space.
In October, the French will launch an international mission called corot, an acronym for COnvection, ROtation, and planetary Transits (not to mention the name of a renowned Parisian painter regarded as a forerunner of impressionism). corot is akin to most, but larger. The 600-kilogram satellite carries a telescope backed by four ccds, double the number borne by most. Rather than pointing at small groups of stars for two months at a time, the $225-million mission will survey a region of the sky for five months, tracking up to twelve thousand stars per pointing. During the two-and-a-half-year mission, corot will observe more than a hundred thousand stars.
This is the second time corot’s principal investigator, Annie Baglin, has attempted to launch a stellar observatory. A decade ago, she was the principal investigator for a most-sized instrument called Evris, which was designed to hitchhike with the 1996 Russian voyage to Mars, beaming data home throughout the 280-day flight. But after a successful launch, the Russian rocket failed and crashed near Bolivia. “Instead of going out [of the atmosphere], it fell down,” Baglin recalls. “It was terrible,” she says, applying the French pronunciation. “You come back in your office the day after and everything—all the contents of your desk—has lost its meaning.”
But Baglin and her team were already thinking about a next-generation mission—one that would orbit Earth. “The second-generation mission became the first-generation mission,” she says. The project quickly found itself in budget trouble, however. Like most, the French instrument was designed as an “unsexy” mission focused on studying stars. It was capable of detecting transits, however, so Baglin cunningly added planet hunting to her mission and went “begging in Europe” for funds. The gambit worked. “Without the exoplanets, we would be dead,” she says. “The statement that we will be first, before the Americans, has some weight in France and in Europe in general.”
