Project PANOPTES, Of Course

This poem was delivered at OSCON 2016, which is an Open Source conference attended by many geeks who are interested in stuff. Our presentation was in the very final time slot on the last day, so I decided I wanted to try and do something fun. There were accompanying slides that helped to illustrate things. 

Project Panoptes, Of Course

by Wilfred Tyler Gee

A long time ago, in the 1980s let's say

In a star system that was located far, far away

From the galactic center, but it was home to the earth

There lived a vain little species, the Center of the Universe!

Now these humans would stare, looking up from the ground

But despite their best efforts, no others they found.

A “Wandering Star”, a local planet, yes, they did see

But alone in the universe they assumed they must be.

Other stars? Sure! there were a billion above!

And astronomers to categorize them, that’s something they love.

But when they looked at the stars what did they see?

Certainly not a planet around a celestial body

However some were determined and kept looking for more

But it’s not like a planet just knocks at your door.

Then in 95, Mayor & Queloz caused shock,

by revealing that planets, instead of knocking, could rock.

Not rock out loud, nor of the terrestrial kind,

But rock the star in its orbit, a remarkable find!

A find so exciting, you'll have to excuse,

while I pause very briefly to take our first interlude:

***

Interlude: Radial Velocity

***

Now 51 Pegasi

Has a planet called 'b'

That tugs at its parent star

Now Newton has told us

Of the gravity that holds us

And how it pulls everything from afar.

Take a two body system

Where one’s huge and one isn’t

For instance, the Sun and the Earth

Here the sun holds its ground,

While the planet goes around,

For its entire orbital girth

However! as the planet goes 'round

A slight wobble is found

From the planet pulling its way

Take 51 Pegasi

And it’s hot-Jupiter named ‘b’

That orbits in just four rapid days

For when the planet goes far

To the other side of the star,

The light is red-shifted away

And by shifting the light,

Even ever so slight,

Planets show up in a periodic way.

Doppler Spectroscopy,

Another name for Radial Velocity

Is the name of this detection technique

And as far as techniques go,

RV stole the show,

And finally gave us some planets to seek

***

Now back on the Earth this caused quite a stir

For astronomers had never considered these planets before.

A Jupiter mass at point 05 AU?

Why that’s closer than Mercury (which I’m sure that you knew)

You see, we did have some models of how planets form

But this first one we found was way out of the norm.

Gas giants, we thought, should be far from their star

And should never be able to migrate that far.

Now their results at that time could not be explained

But more importantly it caused their approach to be changed.

For if we knew of one, then surely there’s others

Just waiting out there for someone to discover.

And discover they did, but with all new techniques

For some of the astronomers had started to think:

If a planet that big passes so close to its source

It would naturally interfere with the light beam, of course

So it was Charbonneau et al, researchers from Harvard

Who really got this whole exoplanet detection thing started.

And the transit technique is the one that they used

Which brings us, of course, to our next interlude

***

Interlude: Transit Method

***

“It’s just luck,” you might say

That a planet falls in the way

To catch in our line of sight

But although this is true

What I’d like to tell you

Is that the numbers make it turn out alright.

If just one percent are coplanar

Then it’s a no-brainer

That we can get a significant amount

For one percent of a billion

Is still 10 million

And that’s a conservative count

But how does it happen,

This magical dampening

Of something so large and so bright?

Well by keeping tight count

Of the photon amount

That comes at us all through the night

We can see a slight dimming

Not the same as a shimmering

But an actual reduction in flux

This corresponds to a planet

In the midst of a transit

And doesn’t rely on your luck

Now it takes just one percent

Of the total light sent

For us to measure a light curve

So by keeping close track

Of the light in the black

All that’s left to do is observe

***

So transits were successful and proved possible to find

Causing NASA and others to make up their mind

To commission a ‘scope, one sent up in space

That really began to heat up this race.

Kepler’s its name and it had just one purpose

To stare at the sky and report it back to us.

At one spot it looked with an unwavering eye

Capturing everything that happened in that small chunk of sky.

For three years it looked and the data’s still coming!

But in that short time it found way more than a dozen.

First 20, then 50, and finally a hundred

And astronomers were stoked that it actually got funded

And now here we are, not many years later

the numbers are high and they keep getting greater

In fact, in this very month 1200 more were announced

More than doubling the number of the confirmed planet count

So the science is great and the research exciting

And if you want to get involved it seems really inviting.

But there’s just one problem with these giant surveys

You'll need a PhD, 12 years, and millions you can pay.

***

But wait! Wait! That can't be all!

I didn't come here just to put up a wall

And while PhDs and giant missions are great

That's no way to get the public to relate.

And if there's one thing we've learned from all this open source

It's that everyday people want in on discourse

So we're happy to say you can help find exoplanets in full force

How do you do it? Why, Project PANOPTES, of course!