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Has anyone measured the wobble of the Sun?

Started by Whitenoise, 10/13/2002 02:53PM
Posted 10/13/2002 02:53PM Opening Post
I was thinking this morning about how scientists discover planets orbiting distant stars by monitoring the wobble of the star from the orbiting planet's gravitational pull.

I was wondering if scientists have measured our own star's wobble to compare it to other stars? If you can find another star with a similar wobble you could reasonably conclude it contained a system like our own. As we are as yet unable to detect smaller planets, perhaps this would be a good way to make an educated guess?
Posted 10/16/2002 04:20AM #1
Pete,

The wobble is detectable in systems with double stars, or *very* large planets. The sun's system is different in that most of the solar system mass, something like 99.999% of it, is in the sun.

The wobble has to do with the barycenter of the system being offset from the center of mass of the sun. For the solar system this offset is small. If similar systems exist 100s of light years away that degree of wobble can't be reliably measured (yet).

sf