13 Free-Floating Extrasolar Planets Discovered

Maestrogenic writes: "Researchers from the UK have discovered (using a new camera on the UK Infrared Telescope) 13 extrasolar planets, free-floating in the Orion Nebula. None of them are smaller than eight Jupiter masses though. This pretty much proves that vagabond planets are a common thing, and brings the total [number of] extrasolar planets discovered to above 40. Here's the official press release. " Note: the jpeg image linked to on this page is a beautiful shot, and downloads quite quickly.

Comments

Not necessarily

[hawk]

I've seen really brief treatements in a couple of places in science fiction, but the most interesting one is the discussion with the chaplain on the chip in Pournelle & Niven's "The Mote in God's Eye."

In general, extraterrestrial life poses absolutely no threat to Christianity. The interesting questions come from whether other races our in need of redemption, like ours, or are in some other state.

ANd then if they are in need of redemption, would our Paschal Sacrifice, be sufficient, or would they need their own Christ?

Unfortunately, that discussion really didn't carry through the rest of the book.

Hmm, another interesting one is Lester Del Rey's . . . awe, nuts; I forget the title . . . Anyway, Christian Fantasy is fairly well represented, but this is the only novel of Christian Science Fiction I've ever seen. I recall another short story by someone travelling from world to world, getting closer and closer to Christ's life, death, and ressurection, but never quite making it. Anyway, in Del Rey's story, the first 50 pages are really slow, but the aliens find a dead and bombed out church, a crucifix, and Bible. They slowly translate it, and get caught up.

*argh* What's that title?

hawk

Perl in astronomy

[B-Rad]

I worked at UKIRT for a year as a software engineer/astronomer. Although I didn't work on the UFTI side (that's an imaging camera, and I worked with their spectroscopic cameras CGS4 and the upcoming Michelle), I worked with the software that probably reduced these images. Most /.'ers would be pleased to know that Perl plays a big role in reducing the data at UKIRT. The software (known as ORAC-DR) that reduces UFTI and IRCAM (the previous-generation imager) data is written in Perl, with calls to specific image reduction tasks written in FORTRAN. And let me tell you this: it was a gem to write. If you've done image processing before with conventional programs like IRAF, then ORAC-DR would be a breeze for you to use. And from the programmer's point of view, it's much easier to use Perl than the "language" that IRAF uses. For one, Perl's waycool.

What basically happens is that the data comes in off the telescope, and when ORAC-DR sees it, the data gets reduced. It automagically removes any sorts of defects that are common to CCD observations (flat-fields, bias levels, sky levels), and often produces publication-quality results. We were joking that astronomers wouldn't even have to write their papers. We'd just reduce the data, fill in some fields on a paper template, then ship the paper off to the appropriate journal. *heh* When I left there was some talk of dedicating a Linux box to the data reduction (instead of the Solaris box they had then).

And it's a Perl-friendly environment at the Joint Astronomy Centre (the place that runs UKIRT in Hawaii). My supervisor (Frossie Economou) has written articles for The Perl Journal, she's got a stuffed penguin on her desk, and the license plate for her Jeep? "PERL5". Another software guy (Tim Jenness) has written stuff for Perldl and is altogether cool for Perl (and stereo equipment too...).

ORAC-DR information is found here. Props to Frossie, Tim, and Chad (who wrote the Apache modules that give the look-and-feel to the JAC webpages -- look for it on CPAN).

Slightly off-topic: another astronomic discovery

[jw3]

It seems that today was a good day for astronomy news :-) I found another interesting bit on the Nature "Science Update" page -- strange new species of gamma-ray sources.

X-ray and gamma-ray emitting sources (high-energy sources) of radiation are usually signs of something very extremal going on: black holes, supernovas, neutron stars, pulsars. Now, a new family of such objects has been found -- the full article is in today's "Nature". What are they? Read the article, I'm not much of an astronomer :-)

Regards,

January

Question for astronomers, haiku form

[LinuxParanoid]

Vagabond planets--
if enough collide, do they
alight with fusion?