A team led by British astronomers is launching an ambitious search for planets orbiting the nearest, brightest stars to Earth, aiming to find prime candidates to answer the question of whether life exists elsewhere. The £2 million Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) will use a dozen robotic telescopes at the Paranal mountain in Chile's Atacama desert, a site known for excellent stargazing conditions.
The telescopes, each as tall as a person, will be steered remotely and send data over the internet. They are exquisitely sensitive to changes in star brightness, watching for fleeting shadows cast by unknown planets as they cross their stars' faces. The team expects to take four years to survey bright, nearby stars, hoping to spot planets two to five times the diameter of Earth.
NGTS is unique in targeting smallish planets around very bright stars, making them ripe for atmospheric analysis. By studying the gases in their atmospheres, astronomers hope to detect signatures of life, similar to how Earth's atmosphere reveals the presence of living organisms through oxygen and water vapour.
Don Pollacco, a planet hunter at the University of Warwick, said: 'In the end, this is about understanding our place in all this around us. Why are we here? What are the chances that similar things can occur elsewhere? What range of life is there? We are at a point in history where we are close to being able to answer these questions.'
