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First Image Of Planet-Like Body Orbiting A Star
deglr6328 writes "The Gemini North Telescope has, for the first time, directly imaged a planet like body orbiting a star. The object is a brown dwarf, 55 to 78 times the mass of planet Jupiter and 14 AU distant from its parent star 15 Sge. It was imaged using adaptive optics(see also here) that correct for the blurring effect of the atmosphere using deformable mirrors. Cool!"
Somebody go get SETI!
Is that a Starbuck's I can see on the high-res JPEG?
It amazes me how far technology has come since the first telescopes.
Today these telescopes look into the past, a visual form of time travel.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
while you're there
http://astra.hi.gemini.edu/gallery/science/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
I say we name it "Rosie" or "Oprah"....
Well, they say that some 75% of the internet's bandwidth revolves around heavenly bodies.
"It was imaged using adaptive optics(see also here) that correct for the blurring effect of the atmospher"
so they drew it in, right? i can do that too! look, planets!
the wonders of gimp.
(before you flame me about adaptive optics...don't.)
'nuff said.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Aren't we a planet (along with a handful of others) orbiting a star (in our case, the Sun??
Okay okay.... we're A planet, I suppose some may say that since we are an ACTUAL planet, "planet-like doesn't really apply here. What about pluto? Most would say it's definitely not a planet, but pretty darn close, making it "planet-like".
We could add another picture to the list by launching a giant mirror into space, so we can look back upon ourselves through it...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Even though the "photograph" is of just two fuzzy blobs it's cool nonetheless, especially that the first thing photographed should be celestial object that we don't have in our solar system that also happens to simultaneously prove that there have to be numerous ways that solar systems are "born" in the wake of a star's formation.
One wonders if the cosmic soup had simmered a little more or a little less if Jupiter wouldn't be a binary star. How would it affect sleep patterns? What the hell would our watches look like?
Who did what now?
Are they absolutely sure someone didn't sneeze on the lens?
Nick
a Brown Dwarf is said to be Classified Less massive than stars but more massive than planets,
brown dwarfs. so.. at 78 times the size of jupiter how massive is massive? and how massive is it not massive compared to a star?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
This is old news and i think i've seen it posted on slashdot before. You people don't get out much, do you. A star-orbiting was sighted a long time ago, when Adam made headlines by saying "Huh? Whats that thing under my feet". It has been known to be revolving around a star since the time of Copernicus and people have been making pictures of bits of it for centuries.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
I had a high school physics teacher that was a bit of a bible thumper (no offense to any thumpers out there) who insisted that we would /never/ find planets (or planet like objects)in other solar systems. It was impossible, because . Something about proof denying faith, and without faith God being nothing ... oh wait -- that was someone else.
...
I'd love to talk with him now
And what, exactly, are you doing to appease the souls of these, albiet tragicly killed, people? Are you going out and picketing against this war? Because if you're not, you're a hippocrite. Oh wait, so am I, and every one else on this f|_|cking planet. Wonder if the people on this "new" planet are all hippocrites?
http://www.mistersampo.com
We need to discover new planets, so we can .. first ;P
send the 3rd wordlers there
A brown dwarf, especially one that much larger than jupiter is not a planet, but is a star.
So this isn't a planet orbiting a star, but would better be described as two starts orbiting each other, much like Alpha Centauri proxima (the dwarf one)
Nice picture of the brown dwarf. Although, it's a big large compared to most other brown dwarfs.
From the CNN.com article...
:)
In a first, object near a star caught on camera
January 7, 2002 Posted: 3:20 PM EST (2020 GMT)
From the slashdot.org posting...
Posted by timothy on Monday January 07, @10:15PM
I'd like to know how this was posted on slashdot before...considering this story was released to the mainstream media only a few hours before the slashdot post, and I didnt see any duplicates today!
As you may know if you read this article opposed to similar posted in the past... this is the first IMAGE, not the first DISCOVERY of a planet outside our solar system...
so.. to coin a new acronym... RTFA
Read The Freakin Article
Like the article says, brown dwarves cannot be considered stars since they do not generate energy from a thermonuclear reaction. Having said that though, they DO give off more energy than they receive from outside sources, much like Jupiter does but on a far larger scale. A good primer site for brown dwarves can be found here .
Lastly, it is important to not confuse brown dwarves (almost stars) with white dwarves (dying stars).
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
The object is a brown dwarf
... :-)
Doesn't look that brown to me!
Then again, I believe that black holes aren't that black either
What exactly is the difference in this post (the Gemini discovery) and this [slashdot.org] post? The linked post (November 26th) describes Hubble imaging an 'extra-solar body' ... so what exactly sets apart the Gemini discovery from the Hubble? Possibly the fact that Hubble is a satellite (hence imaging outside of our atmosphere)?
What ever happene dto Gliese 229?
That was imaged back quite a while ago by a caltech team.
I found papers about it at Jean Schnieder's webpage, but not a listing...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
You know, I agree with you on most of the points you make.
Slashdot (which I admit to reading just a bit too often) tends to be nothing more than mental Cheezie Poofs - small, inconsequential items of amusement forgotten two seconds after they are gone. There's certainly almost no discussion of any consequence, and what little there is usually wanders off into pointless flaming.
It is due at least in part to the demographic - there's a pretty heavy contingent of barely literate teens who know very little beyond coding (as evidenced by the ease with which one can get an "informative" karma boost by explaining perfectly simple items which should be common knowledge to any decently educated person). Throw in a few WWF-inspired ego trips and a bit of Katz-bashing (agreed again - for all his faults he is the most consistently interesting writer and the anitpathy towards him has never ceased to puzzle me) and, well, that's a typical day on slashdot.
Hmmm... now you've got me thinking. What the hell am I wasting my time here for?
Ciao.
Until we see it moving around that other star in an ellipse, it's just some bright pixels next to some other bright pixels. Hopefully, in a few months, we'll get to see some relative motion from it.
By the way, while you are on your campaign to protect innocent lives, you better take on drunk drivers, pollution, serial killers, cigarettes (maybe not innocent, but still..) AIDs victims (especially in '3rd world countries'), etc. You better get moving.
What?
I still have a high-school science book that states "a star will appear as a single point of light even in the largest telescopes"
Now we can see surface features on stars and even objects orbiting them. Pretty cool. Imagine what an orbiting interferometer will do!
How come we all focus on photographing other planets when we should focus on how to GO to other planets using sci-fi-to-reality technologies like warp-drive? I know I'm missing something but should'nt we just focus of the latter because if we do achieve this goal, photographing other stars would be an achievable goal then? OR maybe its just too much Civilization 3 or SMAC... *ponder*
What about the Chub Club? That's a whole shit load of planet-like bodies orbiting a corpulent star.
Someone needs to mod the above up; it's important. I would have rephrased the post to reflect that this was NOT the first image of a brown dwarf orbiting a star if I knew about it before I submitted the comment.
On closer examination, the Gemini North press release does not claim to be the first to image a brown dwarf; from the site:"The faint companion is separated from its parent star by less than the distance between the Sun and the planet Uranus and is the smallest separation brown dwarf companion seen with direct imaging". It is only the CNN story that incorrectly claims this.....Hmmmm perhaps a notification is in order.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I mean...
Adam... as in Adam and Eve. Get it?
Still, it wasn't funny, but I at leat got your gist tunah.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
If Jupiter had somehow been lit (by being hit by an object the size of uranus, say - I've been told that would have done it), it would have burned out in the deep, deep precambrian (billions of years ago). It doesn't have five billion years of fuel. While burning in the early stages of earthly development, it would have been about as bright as the moon (of course, the sun at that time was bluer and overall dimmer). Butterfly flaps it's wings in China, I know, but I don't think it would have been enough of a change in the overall radiation level on earth that whatever conditions allowed life to rise on earth wouldn't have been in effect. Given those conditions, you ask - is life likely to arise, or is it a rare event even in the conditions that favor it (over the course of billions of years,) such that a tiny change in conditions could have prevented that one spark of life from occuring? As a molecular biologist with interests in the field of molecular evolution and structural biology, I'm going to say - no, given that conditions that favor the appearance of life (as a chemical phenomenon) it's going to happen.
If Jupiter were more massive - simply igniting it without changing it's mass wouldn't cause it to exert more gravity - well, yeah, all bets are off, since that would imply very different things about the environment under which the entire solar system formed. Although, it just occured to me, Jupiter's core is still undergoing nuclear reactions (so is the earth's core) just not on a stellar scale. I don't see how we'd know if those reactions had been much faster/brighter three billion years ago. We'd have to guess from the amount of heavy hydrogen present in the Jovian atmosphere, and I don't think our measurements (radio spectroscopy? something about Jupiter's magnetic properties?)are precise enough to figure that out.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
...Won't someone go to the effort of making a pun involving the words "brown dwarf" and "uranus"!
I am almost certain it can be done. Someone out there must have the technology.
:)
As you can read, as far as 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a brown dwarf orbiting a brown dwarf on Gliese 229B. Indeed, some of the US media call it "the first discovered brown-dwarf" although the discoverer was Rafael Rebolo et al at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (he and his colleagues proposed the "Lithium test" method to actually detect this substellar objetcts). You can read a short report about brown dwarf findings at American Scientist.
Víctor R. Ruiz
rvr(at)blogalia.com
It's not a matter of whether or not Jupiter gets "lit". The sun was never "lit" as you speak of it. The sun is massive enough that the gravity well in the center is massive enough so that the nuclei of hydrogen particles collapse into helium (and these can collapse into heavier elements; our sun reaches it's limit around Oxygen. heavier elements are made in more massive stars). This collapse of nuclei into heavier nuclei is called fusion (gives off lotsa energy). Now for Jupiter to become a star it would have to be around the order of 100 times more massive than it is now (though that's still much less massive than the sun). With that much more mass it would definately affect the orbits (and possibly even the accretion, as there would have been an planet where the asteroid belt is were it not for Jupiter's current mass) of all the planets.
Also, the nuclear reactions going on inside the Earth and Jupiter's cores are fission based (decay of unstable elements). This is completely different from what's happening in the Sun so comparing this to what was happening in the early stages of the solar system is pointless.
but I'm reminded of a joke:
Q. What does toilet paper have in common with the star ship Enterprise?
A. The both go around Uranus picking up Klingons.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
adaptive optics have the ablity to create images at the same resolution of the Huble space telescope. I wonder what this means for it's future. Seems kinda pointless now.
( I submitted an artical about it to slashdot a month or so ago, but it was rejected..)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
. Now for Jupiter to become a star it would have to be around the order of 100 times more massive than it is now (though that's still much less massive than the sun).
Well, that may or may not be true. The question is - can you get Jupiter's core under enough pressure to undergo fusion? The fact that it is undergoing fission now is relevant because fission of the sort occuring in Jove's core also requires considerable (although lesser) density/pressure. The heavy elements may also provide a source of high energy alpha particles to help fusion get started (like in a modern H bomb which uses fissioning technitium as a trigger.)
So, PV = nRT, right? Well, if Jupiter were hit by a uranus-sized object moving perpendicular to the orbital plane -
1) It would put off huge amounts of heat (q = delta T / S) which might increase the pressure in Jupiter's core enough to ignite it.
2) The actual impact would involve a lot of force, as well - the whole planet would deform like a ball bouncing off the wall of a squash court. This would constrict the volume available to the core (lowering V, raising P) as well as causing huge differentials in density (raising n locally) as the planet bounced back into shape.
I'm not sure if that would be enough to do it, but once Jupiter is "lit", the fusion processes in it's core WOULD put off enough heat to be self-sustaining.
Also, the nuclear reactions going on inside the Earth and Jupiter's cores are fission based (decay of unstable elements). This is completely different from what's happening in the Sun so comparing this to what was happening in the early stages of the solar system is pointless.
Actually, fusion is decay of unstable elements as well - heavy hydrogen nuclei are hit by other heavy hydrogen nuclei and "decay" into helium nuclei. The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Thank you for pointing that out though, since I agree that my previous post certainly didn't draw a distinction between the two.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
They're admitting that it's all done with mirrors?
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
As for the HST's future, it's scheduled for EOL at the end of the decade. Check out NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope page for its successor.
I'm so incredibly lazy, and I guess there's more like me out there...
http://astra.hi.gemini.edu/gallery/science/
...from the people that are co-ordinating AO research across the country:
http://cfao.ucolick.org/
...unless pictures of earth don't count.
MikeAtIF*ckStuffedAnimalsDotCom
The object is a planet, 1/55 to 1/78 the mass of a brown dwarf. View the photo.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If Jupiter were to light in the way that you describe, isn't it quite possible that it wouldn't have enough mass (-> gravity) to hold itself together under the massive outward pressure of fusion in its core? Thus it could get lit for a relatively short period of time, but it could easily not last given its mass.
As an extreme example, our nuclear bombs work on the principle that you're describing to light jupiter, but they don't exactly last very long.
My very imprecise understanding of it (IANAA <- I Am Not An Astrophysicist) is that the reason that the sun doesn't blow apart is the extreme gravity holds it together. That's why in several billion years as the mass of the sun decreases through fusion (and subsequent radiation), it won't have the mass to keep itself so compact so it will get bigger from the outward pressure of the fusion in its core.
Then for really big stars, when they run out of fuel, that outward pressure dissapears rather suddenly and everything falls back in. This creates an incredible amount of pressure inside and 'lights' the star for one last time, fusing heavier elements to get the really big stuff (such as lead, uranium, etc.). Unfortunately, this doesn't last very long as the energy released is incredibly huge, and the outward pressure wins over the gravity in a rather dramatic fashion called a supernova.
Now, getting back to Jupiter, given that it's not massive enough to light itself through the pressure exerted by gravity, isn't it rather likely that if it were to get artificially 'lit', it wouldn't have enough mass to hold itself together and it would go boom, rather than burn?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
If Jupiter had somehow been lit ... it would have burned out in the deep, deep precambrian (billions of years ago). It doesn't have five billion years of fuel.
No. It would outlive the Sun. The larger a star is the greater the internal pressure, and the faster it burns fuel.
Small stars are long lived, large stars burn out fast.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
the abstract for the technical article is already on the preprint servers. it's much better than the cnn article, for the technically trained. (the complete article was temporarily withdrawn, but they tell you how to get it.) see http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0112407
Umm... an idea came to my mind to build an ao telescope and picture the Moon with it. Assuming we did this, what would be the resolution within reasonable bounds of investment to hardware. Would we be able to see the Apollo landing sites and the trails left by the Moon Buggy?
I wonder about the tone the adaptive optics is written about -- AO is cool, but it's here some time already -- a current state of technology. Anyone a little interested in astronomy knows about it and has seen number of images achieved through use of it.
African Extraterrestrial Vertically Challanged Star
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Usually, dimmer stars burn much longer than brighter stars, so unless the planet-hit/lit-by-some-huge-asteroid is some strange exception, it should still burn today and should all in all burn much longer than the sun.
I want this technology for home blury photos in photoshop
More importantly: a bitch-slap from a passing asteroid will not "ignite" a big-ass ball of H & He. This is astrophysics, here; we're talking about 20000000000000000000000000000000kg of hydrogen, not Strike-Anywhere White-Tip kitchen matches!
Jupiter is about 1/80 the mass needed for ignition, which occurs due to heating from internal gravitational collapse.
woof.
"Ignite Jupiter", indeed! Then again, I once thought you might be able to "execute" a star simply by hitting it with a chunk of iron (see my other post on this thread.)
Now if they could use this spectacular technology to show me the singularity at the center of our galaxy i'd register for that astro-phsyics class.
It was imaged using adaptive optics ... that correct for the blurring effect of the atmosphere using deformable mirrors.
:)
Leet. Sounds like they've got hardware Photoshop filters.
First Image Of Planet-Like Body Orbiting A Star
Nah, I've got a few pictures of the wife and kids standing on Earth.
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UNIX *is* user-friendly. Its just more selective on who its friends are. --Scott Adams
Actually, I usually have my filter set at 2, so no, I probably wouldn't have seen it before. Hey, it got me my +1 bonus back, hehehe.
For an earlier image of a planet-like body orbiting a star: click here.
> The sun is massive enough that the gravity well
> in the center is massive enough so that the
> nuclei of hydrogen particles collapse into
> helium
The gravity of the sun isn't great enough to directly override the nuclear forces and cause fusion to occur. The weight of all the sun's material pressing inward because of that gravity, however, is great enough to cause fusion.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
An actual image of a planet-like body orbiting a star? No way!
The mass is deceptive.
The body is closer to the size of the Sun than Jupiter.
Still brown dwarves are important to study and may be very common in the universe.
I magnified the image of the new planet and I swear I saw a Starbucks logo.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Sigh. Galileo proved that _Aristotle_ was not the be-all and end-all of science. He believed the Bible. So did his patron, the Pope.
Thus, he also proved that science did not end with the Bible, as many people believed.
What?
http://www.solstation.com/stars/gl229.htm
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Hi, I was just wondering if you have an email address that I could contact you at, I have a few more questions relating to this.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
This was really the first brown dwarf imaged, AND exven had it's spectra taken. all back in 1995.
e &b tnG=Google+Search
t ra &btnG=Google+Search
Here are a couple of Google searches, for the images and spectra:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gliese+229B+imag
http://www.google.com/search?q=gliese+229B+spec
it's just Missy Elliott... has anyone checked?
M-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Sorry to say this, but the radioactive heat liberated within the Earth's core (and within Jupiters core) Is due to random decay of uranium and thorium. Fission does not occour there! The concentration of thorium and uranium within the core is far too low to allow fission to occour. Remember that the earth's core is 90%iron and 10%nickel. These metals are fairly good neutron absorbers, so in order for nuclear reactions other than alpha or beta decay to occour, you would need more than one percent uranium within the core.
Uranium and Thorium is not so abundant within the earths core, as it forms light silicates, and during the earths early life was concentrated in the crust of the earth in the process of differentiation of the earth as a whole.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
The last time I saw a planet-like body orbiting a star was Marlon Brando's birthday party.