NASA Detects Baby Planet

neema writes "Yesterday, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (web site here) detected the youngest planet, at less than 1 million years old, known to exist. The planet, for those of you who want to visit or something, is 420 light years away circling the star CoKu Tau 4. According to astronomer Dan Watson of the University of Rochester, the discovery of this "Baby Planet" "really causes problems for the major theories of planetary formation." Arist conception pictures and more info can be found at the Planetary Photojournal."

Comments

Fake Pics?

[BumbaCLot]

Why do they always put the fake pictures up instead of the real thing? Are those semi-interested in space that shallow?

Re:Fake Pics?

[martinX]

Don't you believe it. They're real all right. They have visited AND returned.

Re:Fake Pics?

[bruthasj]

Because the real pick looks like the dot in your question mark?

Re:Fake Pics?

[mattboston]

you mean there's people out there interested in space? other than the aliens?

Re:Fake Pics?

[anrwlias]

This is a common misconception. Aliens aren't actually interested in space.

Re:Fake Pics?

[whitis]

I actually worked with these guys around ten years ago on somewhat similar but ground based imaging spectrophotometric instruments but I don't know the details of the instrument used in this case or the actual observations.

I suspect that the actual images have much too low a resolution to actually resolve the planet from the star (the laws of physics limit what can actually be resolved by even a perfect telescope of a given size) and instead that the presence of the planet is deduced by its spectral signature. Also, it looks like they observed not so much a planet but a cleared area of the protoplanetary disks which suggests the presence of a young planet.

The spectra themselves can be seen here:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releas es/ssc2 004-08/visuals.shtml

Also, pictures are almost always very heavily processed. The raw pictures usually have more noise than signal and are often taken at wavelengths that would be invisable to the human eye. Colors in modern astronomical pictures are
often translated from other "colors" we cannot see or psuedocolored to highlight subtle changes in intensity in a monochromatic image.

NASA, whose budget is at the mercy of public perception (a largely scientifically illiterate public jaded by Hollywood special effects and advertising) is very PR conscious and tends to come up with these artist's conceptions to give the common person something to latch onto. In this case NASA had the integrity to identify the picture as an artists conception but that disclosure was not faithfuly reproduced by the press.

Re:Fake Pics?

[beeplet]

I think they often put up artist's conceptions in order to illustrate non-visual data (spectral lines, etc). What bugs me in this case, though, is that it is labelled a "photo"... Now I know, and you know, that if anything this is a photo of a painting. But not everybody who reads the daily news would immediately realize that.

Last year I taught a course on the role of art in astronomy. "Artists interpretations" have a significant impact in shaping the public's impressions of astronomy, for better or for worse. The good side of it is of course that a picture can convey information that would be too abstract or technical to put in a news story the average person wants to read. The bad side of it is that such pictures often sensationalize astronomy in a way that distorts people's ideas or what science is actually capable of.

In this story for example, I think it would have been really great if they had included, along with the artist's conception, a visual of the actual data. That way people would be able to see for themselves what is observation and what is extrapolation.

Prettying up astronomical images is great for drawing people into the subject, but at somepoint it starts to become misleading. A LOT of people don't realize that all those beautiful Hubble pictures are shown in artificial color! Of course there's good reason for that - we couldn't see all of the wavelengths with our eyes anyway - but if the ultimate goal (and I believe it is) is to educate people about astronomy, we need to make more of an effort to give them the full picture (so to speak...) I think "the average joe" would be able to appreciate it much more than most scientists would seem to give him credit for.

Current theory is guesswork at best.

[Thag]

We have a lot to learn about the planets in our own solar system, and with current technology we can't even detect most planets circling another star. None of the planets in our soloar system would be detectable if they were circling even the nearest star.

So, any kind of theory-making that goes on now is inherently guesswork without enough data. It's like trying to do a comprehensive study of zoology using only the animals living in the park across the street.

Jon Acheson

because

[pb]

The real picture would look like a dot or a blob at best?

Re:because

[stevesliva]

And is originally in IR, so it would probably be grayscale unless prettied up.

The Baby Planet?

[asterism]

They found the Baby planet?

So THAT'S where they come from...

...and here I was--nevermind...it's absurd.

Press release

[Smallpond]

More in-depth is the original Press release from CalTech.

The baby planet is not the big discovery. The scientists find organic chemistry more interesting (they would).

By the age of the star.

[Eevee]

Since the star it's circling, CoKu Tau 4, is estimated to be about a million years old, then this potential planet should be younger.

Re:Hell, I'll bite

[pyrrhonist]

I've got a couple of questions regarding your post, cheezus. Since your post was modded "troll" rather than "funny," I'll assume you were serious.

Cheezus was making a joke. He wasn't serious.

Of course, humor is harder to recognize in pure text messages, so feel free to correct this assumption if necessary.

It was a pretty obvious joke, especially if you're over 30. Of course, the moderator didn't get it either.

What is the connection between your subject line and your statements?

The connection is between 420 and bong smoking.