The Search of Water in Exoplanets
Cosmovici, C. B. ; Montebugnoli, S. ; Righini, S. ; ...Flamini, E.
Jan - 2006

journal : European Planetary Science Congress 2006
type: Article Journal

Abstract
The impact of 21 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy/9 with the Jovian Atmosphere in July 1994 gave astronomers the unique opportunity to study the chemistry and physics of a planet during a catastrophic impact and permitted the detection of the 22 GHz water MASER emission line for the first time in the solar system (1). Our measurements have shown that this spectral line can be used as a powerful diagnostic tool for planetary search outside the solar system, as comets are able to deliver huge amounts of water in planetary atmospheres rising the probability of life development. Thus an observational program (called ITASEL = Italian Search for Extraterrestrial Life) started 1999 using a fast multichannel spectrometer coupled to the 32 m dish of the Medicina radiotelescope. Up to now 32 exoplanetary systems have been observed. Suspect transient emissions have been identified from 4 stellar systems, but the low S/N ratio needs confirmation from other powerful radiotelescopes with different methods. In order to improve the detection limits a new multichannel spectrometer was developed. It is a modular system: parallelizing several boards it will be possible to increase the bandwidth and the number of channels. The system will be able to operate realtime FFTs (over bands narrower than 100 MHz) in parallel to KLTs (no real time) or other transforms. This feature could pay a key role in ordinary spectral line observations and in future applications requiring very hjgh processing/computing power, dramatically increasing the on-line analysis performances.

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