[2025 - 2026 Semester 1 Official Meeting: Meeting 3]

Date: 11 September 2025, Thursday

Duration: 15:10 - 15:55

Topic: Exploring Distant Worlds

In today’s science club meeting, Joel Park did his TMI research presentation.

He prepared information about New Horizons, which is a spacecraft launched by NASA.

The New Horizons spacecraft was built to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond it. It explored Pluto, gathering information about its surface activity, geological features, and atmosphere. And after that, it keeps flying into the Kuiper Belt and has continued its exploration up to now.

After Joel’s presentation, we read a document, “Distant Planets” that Joshua Kim shared.

According to it, scientists use two indirect methods to find planets, because the stars around them are too bright to see the planets directly.

The first method is called spectral lines. Atoms absorb or emit light at specific wavelengths, creating stripe-like “fingerprints” in the light. By observing changes in these stripes, scientists can tell if a star is moving. The second method is the Doppler effect. Stars move because of a planet’s gravity, and by observing changes in the wavelengths of their light, scientists can find evidence of planets around them.

After everyone miraculously made it to finish the reading without falling asleep, we spent some time thinking of more questions for the Q&A with the SNU professors.

Written by Yeuun Boo

Pictures taken by Yeuun Boo