Extra-Solar Planet Is Probably Just A Star

ussphoenix writes: "NASA has issued a press release stating the the object Hubble photographed in 1997 is probably just a star. Originally, astronomers believed it was a proto-planet several times the mass of our own Jupiter. Oh well, there are other extra-solar planets."

Comments

Saw this coming from a mile away...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the day that this "extra-solar planet" was announced. I was working for a major British telescope in Hawaii, and the only people who believed that this thing was actually a planet was us students. None of the astronomers thought it was a planet. I distinctly remember someone saying, "In a couple of years they'll figure out that it's a white dwarf or something. It's no planet."

This story seems to be an indication of the sorry state of astronomy these days. There's not enough money going into it, and so astronomers have to release whiz-bang discoveries in an attempt to gain public support and thus more money. Witness also the announcement that the Mars meteorite had fossilized life.

(P.S. I'm only posting as AC because I can't remember my password and the email account I use is at work and I'm at home... *ugh*)

Re:anyone remember planet X?

[DHartung]

A reminder that the news from NASA is about a planet outside our solar system.

There have been several hypothetical planets that did not turn out to be real, but none specifically between Earth and Mars. The term Planet X was used by Percival Lowell around a hundred years ago to refer to a specific mass beyond the orbit of Neptune that seemed to be causing its orbital inconsistencies. The search for Planet X took decades (really beginning in 1841), finally ending with the discovery of Pluto in 1930. To some extent, this search continues, with the discovery in the last decade of hundreds of so-called "Transneptunian" asteroids, representative of a great cloud of small rocks. While it's not impossible that there is still a large planet-sized body far out there, it's unlikely. There have been numerous non-scientific books and articles that have used terms like "Planet X" or "Planet Ten" to refer to other imagined planets, but these works aren't scientifically supported.
----