Article by: Andacs Robert Eugen, on 25 April 2022, at 11:11 am Los Angeles time

Recently, NASA discovered an exoplanet 25,133 light-years from Earth.

It is one of the most distant exoplanets, but what makes it very special is the method by which NASA discovered it.

Exoplanets are usually discovered by common methods, such as transit or radial velocity, but there are times when NASA uses other methods to discover exoplanets.

This is the case with the recent discovery. 

Exoplanet OGLE-2018-BLG-0383L b was discovered by scientists using the Gravitational Microlensing method.

This is not a well-known method, so it is rarely used.

About this method:

As I said, Gravitational Microlensing is a slightly different and not always safe method of discovering exoplanets.

Gravitational Microlensing occurs when the gravity of a star or (exo)planet focuses the light of another star. So at the moment, it seems to be brighter for astronomers.

The nearby star emits light to the exoplanet and its star. The light from the exoplanet's star will increase as time passes, but then it will decrease.

It follows that the phenomenon is temporary.

But all this light is seen by the observer and sometimes causes an illusion that the observed star is much brighter, but in reality, it is only a temporary phenomenon.

According to NASA researchers, let's imagine we have a magnifying glass and point it at a piece of paper. The sunlight will go through the magnifying glass and fall on a small spot on the paper.

So is the gravity of the planet and the star focuses the light rays of the distant star on the observer.

Even though the planet we are talking about is the lens, the light levels decrease, but they start to increase due to the star of the exoplanet that remains a lens.

Thus, after the star is no longer in an optimal area to project the light of the distant star to the observer, the light of the distant star disappears from the eyes of the observer.

Usually, such a process takes a month, a month or so, and the observer can see that a distant star is slowly becoming brighter.

And if the planet becomes a lens for the observer, then according to NASA, there will be a brief gleam in the observer's eyes.

By this method, 130 exoplanets were discovered by NASA out of the more than 5000 discovered so far.

We hope that our explanation will make your view on this very rare method clearer.

If you wish, you can send us your feedback at support@bailey-universe.com

Source: NASA exoplanets