Sentences with phrase «background stars passes»

Not exact matches

So when a dim star in our galaxy passes almost directly between Earth and a second star, the gravitational field of the intervening «lens» star bends and magnifies light from the background star, a process called gravitational microlensing.

When the dwarf, named Stein 2051 B, passed in front of another star from Earth's perspective, Sahu's team followed the position of the background star.

Microlensing occurs when a foreground star passes close to our line of sight to a more distant background star.

This means that in 2014 and 2016 Proxima Centauri will pass in front of two background stars that are along its path.

If one star, however, passes nearly precisely in front of a farther background star, the gravity of the foreground star acts like a giant lens, magnifying the light from the background star.

According to Shvartzvald, Yee and their colleagues, OGLE -2016-BLG-1195Lb is the lowest mass world ever discovered through microlensing, a technique in which light from a star that passes in front of a bright background object causes the latter to appear brighter, thus allowing scientists to detect anomalies created by a planet orbiting in the foreground.

Alas, no background star happened to pass behind the dwarf planet during her studies.

In the case of two stars without planets, the background star's brightness will increase as the foreground star passes in front of it and then decrease as the latter moves away, in a predictable way during a period of days or weeks, producing a well - defined light curve.

Scientists can take advantage of the warping effect by measuring the light of distant stars, looking for a brightening that might be caused by a massive object, such as a planet, that passes between a telescope and a distant background star.