Falconry; This is the name of a sport and ancient method of hunting.
In this method, hunters are using trained falcons to hunt. Now it is time for a galactic falconry.
This time the planet hunters will use a Falcon to send their trap to space. Their targets are extrasolar planets near the Earth.
A new Hunter of exoplanets
Exoplanets or Extrasolar planets are among most interesting subjects in modern astronomy. These are the planets that are orbiting around other stars.
While for a long time we have known that they should exist somewhere out there but it was just in the middle of 1990s that we discovered one of them.
Since then we discovered thousands of new worlds, in all sizes and shapes.
Many of them are discovered by Kepler Space Telescope during last few years.
TimeLine: A short history of hunting the exoplanets
New hunter in search of New Worlds
If everything is going according to the plan, on Monday, April 16th, Falcon 9 rocket (A Space X company luncher) will carry a new telescope to the orbit. Its name is TESS or The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, will looking for new worlds in the neighborhood of the sun for next two years.
This telescope is equipped with four sets of optical detectors and will survey more than 85% of the whole sky in search of the extrasolar planets. It can search planets around the stars within the 300 Light years distance of the sun.
Exoplanets: Future of Astronomy
If you are interested in science or astronomy, exoplanets and their stories will be with you in coming years. These are the places where we will talk about a lot, we are looking for the holy grail of the planetary search and maybe in our lifetime, we will witness the discovery of first Earth 2.0; An Earth-sized rocky planet, with the similar atmosphere that is orbiting in the habitable zone around a Sun-like star.
Maybe even right now someone is standing in one of those planets and looking to the sky and searching for us.
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXOPLANETS
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Behind the story
The rationale behind the story
This is the story about new telescope in search of exoplanets.
I chose to use a timeline to show the progress of our search and advancement in the field of exoplanets and how we progressed.
Also, I chose to use a quiz for this article.
The reason for choosing the quiz is it could surprise the audiences with the facts, and also it helps them to find out few points that maybe they don’t care in the context of the story itself.
I recognized that a quiz is a tool for engaging the audience but in this case and the context of the explanatory story, I think it could serve as a journalistic tool.
It could add to the facts that audiences can learn from the story, and it doesn’t distract them and also didn’t design as just a click bite.
So I think it is a fun add-in to the story.
About the timeline, I think it actually tells part of the story in a way that empowered the purpose of it.