Dr. Swift’s Discovery

Thacher atronomer helps identify oldest planets
Thacher science and math teacher Jon Swift is part of an international team of astronomers making big news this week with their discovery of our galaxy’s oldest-known planets. Published this week in the Astrophysical Journal, their study focused on five terrestrial planets orbiting an 11.2 billion-year-old sun.

“This is a really interesting breakthrough because it indicates that Earth-sized planets have been forming throughout most of the history of our Galaxy," explained Dr. Swift at Wednesday’s Assembly. “This opens up the possibility for life to have started elsewhere in our Galaxy several billion years before life began here on Earth."

Dr. Swift is the third author of this study, which has made headlines this week around the world. Among the media outlets covering the news are The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Science Magazine, PBS, and Forbes. 

Following his Assembly announcement, Dr. Swift invited students to an Open Observatory event this Friday at 5 pm at the Thacher Observatory, hosted by the Thacher Astronomy Club. “We will open up the dome and see what we can see with the telescope,” said Dr. Swift.

Head of School Michael Mulligan commented, “Having an accomplished astronomer on our faculty brings an outside perspective to our School that is so important and uplifting, a point brought home by the fact that students have signed on to the Astronomy Club in droves.”

The discovery of the new planets was made possible by NASA’s Kepler Space Mission. The Kepler space-borne observatory launched in 2009 and measures the light of distant stars in order to detect the presence of Earth-like planets. Research teams like Dr. Swift’s have pored over this data and have confirmed more than 1,000 planets so far, and are investigating an additional 3,000+ possible planets.

You can read the full text of the journal article here: An Ancient Extrasolar System with Five Sub-Earth-size Planets.
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    • Kepler 444

      Kepler444

      Kepler-444: An ancient extrasolar system with five Earth-sized planets.

      This animation starts by showing us Kepler's field-of-view in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. We are next taken to the vicinity of the Kepler-444 planetary system, located some 117 light years away. Kepler-444, the parent star, was formed 11.2 billion years ago when the Universe was less than 20% its current age. This pale yellow-orange star is 25% smaller than the Sun and substantially cooler. We see its five planets transiting in front of the stellar disc. Having sizes between those of Mercury and Venus, they cause a tiny dimming of the light received from the star during transit. The last segment of the animation emphasizes the compactness of this system. The five planets orbit their parent star in less than 10 days or, equivalently, at less than one-tenth Earth's distance from the Sun. In a way, this system may be thought of as a miniature version of the inner planets in our own Solar System. Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine.

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