What am I missing????? Only one thing. The assumption of the formula is that the orbits are random. This corresponds to your first universe. In yo...

what proportion of those exoplanets would actually be observable from earth, if the angle of their orbital plane relative to our line of sight is, in ...

Topic renamed.

Topic split to "Exoplanets"

I really dont see any element of consideration for whether a star system’s orbital plane is edge on Yes, this is taken into account... See this dia...

Hi Andy, Exoplanet transits are really rather common. I think you may be overcomplicating the calculation. I've just done a quick plot of data on ex...

Fascinating stuff, and a bit of a headache for the mission! Which of the two do they attempt a landing on? To quote the lander's navigator, Eric Jur...

a phenomenon known as a Brocken Spectre Thanks for this, Andy... you can sometimes see a similar phenomenon from an airplane, surrounding the shadow ...

can I include rainbows Absolutely... fascinating stuff. Great photo!! In fact, I don't know where to start! There are so many related sky phenomena...

that’s assuming that the plane of the exoplanet’s orbit is in line of sight between the earth and the star No, it isn't. It only assumes a circular o...

it has often struck me as a remarkably low probability that the orbital plane of an exoplanet would lie exactly in the line of sight between earth and...

Completely agree with you! And I'm really not sure why the technical term can't be used either... it is a perigee-syzygy. I love the word "syzygy"... ...

this is Sky at Night week Didn't watch this last night, due to the World Cup extra time, but I caught up with it on iPlayer this morning. Link is her...

Thanks Andy, it's never easy when conditions are that marginal. In the back of my mind was the huge thunderstorm which came out of nothing on Thursday...