4-inch Telescope Finds New Planet

serutan writes "After a backyard astronomy size telescope first tracked the periodic dimming of a star 500 light-years away, the Keck I telescope in Hawaii later confirmed that a Jupiter-size planet orbits the star. A press release from Harvard gives details. This is the first result of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, a project using small telescopes and cheap equipment to search for extrasolar planets. "

Comments

Proof that size doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been so proud and confident of my four inches. Thank you Slashdot.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Ignignot]

The telescope is four inches wide. I would be horrified to learn you are the same.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[MolarMass]

When this topic appeared, I had wondered how long it would take the slashdot community to post a "size doesn't matter" comment.

I had surmised perhaps 3 or 4 posts, but I was wrong. It took only 1.

I read Slashdot because it consistently exceeds my expectations. Way to go!

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[farlcow]

An email in my inbox this morning guaranteed to increase your size by 4 inches. This could like, double, the number of planets we find! And free shipping to boot.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[temojen]

Make your own!

There should be lots of resources on the web on how to make your own telescope.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[lucabrasi999]

When I read this, why is it that I am reminded of a line from Blazing Saddles: "Excuse me while a whip this out."?

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

She loves my fist, too.

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Ignignot]

Jesus, it must be like throwing a brick down a hallway!

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[mandolux]

:) My favorite quote from Blazing Saddles: "...you use your tongue prettier than a 20-dollar whore."

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Lars T.]

Free shipping to the planets we find?

Re:Proof that size doesn't matter

[Psychotext]

This is slashdot you fool! You've mentioned wife and kinky sex in the same post... good job you posted as AC or you'd be hunted by the green eyed monsters forever! :)

Let's review the facts here:

[Anonymous Coward]

• 4-inch
  
• Cmdrtaco

In Related News...

[grunt107]

2 inch telescope finds new neighbor...

Re:In Related News...

[Scaba]

But does this new neighbor have Jupiter-sized orbs?

Re:In Related News...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but if he squints he can see Uranus.

Re:In Related News...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but she's got HUGE......tracts of land.

Re:In Related News...

[kfg]

But does this new neighbor have Jupiter-sized orbs?

They're pulling me in. Can't. . . resist. . .the attraction.

KFG

watching out for the little guy

[ormoru]

so what if you can't see the forest for the trees!?

what about seeing the stars for the planets?!

and don't forget not seeing the comets for the meteors!

Smaller Planets?

[Tango42]

Will this method help find smaller planets? Jovian sized are all well and good, but Terrestrial would be more interesting.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

Yes -- thats why there's plans for a space telescope in the next 10 or 20 years to look specifically for terrestrial planets.

also, jovian planets are good info too. One strong hypothesis is that life couldnt exist on earth without a big planet (jupiter) out there sweeping up most of the space junk (asteroids, comets, etc) that comes falling into the solar system. Big planets help out the inner planets by keeping collisions down.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[smooth wombat]

Big planets help out the inner planets by keeping collisions down.

I'm sure there's a joke in there about fat americans but I just can't quite get it figured out.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Aardpig]

Will this method help find smaller planets?

Almost certainly not. The amplitude of the brightness variations, caused by the transit of a terrestrial planet, varies as the square of the ratio between the radius of the star and the planet. For the Sun/Earth values, this figure comes out as a 0.008% variation in brightness, or -- in astronomical terms -- a change of 0.2 millimagnitudes.

Measuring such small changes is extremely difficult, even using very large (5-10m) ground-based telescopes that have fancy optics and a high throughput. That's why terrestrial planet finding using the transit method will have to wait for NASA's Kepler mission. Scheduled for launch in 2007, this mission will look for minute brightness variations in c. 100,000 nearby Solar-type stars.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point - I have read the same. My theory is also that the inner rocky planets as in our solars system were once gasious giants. Early on in development, the sun burst in high activity blowing the inner plannets dense clouds off the planet leaving a thinner gas bass.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[techno-vampire]

Will this method help find smaller planets?

I doubt it. Terrestrial planets wouldn't block enough of a star's light to make a noticable difference. Consider that the Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and Sol about 865,000. That's roughly 108 times the diameter and the area (what's important here) is proportional to the square of the diameter making Sol's area on the order of 11664 times that of the Earth. Even with Jovian planets, the area covered is small, but apparently not too small.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

I kinda doubt that. There's only so much gas a core the size and mass of earth can hold. I doubt it could hold gas giant amounts of gas -- but i could be wrong. It just doesn't "seem" right.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[ImaLamer]

Big planets help out the inner planets by keeping collisions down.

Think of Jovian planets as switches, routers and other Layer-2 and above network hardware. They break up collision domains.

Ha...

(funny to me ok!)

Re:Smaller Planets?

[the_2nd_coming]

unfortunately, to date, all the Jupiter size planets have had insanely close or insanely eccentric orbits which would preclude any terrestrial planets from forming in a habitable zone.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[EpsCylonB]

More importantly, how do we get to them ?.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[LiquidCoooled]

It is differences in scale like this that makes SETI practically impossible.

Even if we are belting out radio waves using every milliamp of power we possess, they are simply drowned out by the enormous radio source we orbit.

Thats why in the larger scheme of things, only something as large as a supernova could be used to contact other star systems, and even then, we could only ping them, then get 100% packet loss.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Dashing Leech]

Me-thinks you misunderstood the previous post. Jupiter sweeps up the "dirt" in the solar system so that Earth gets hit less, thus life has a better chance of forming and growing. Unless you are joking in which I case ... I don't get it.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[techno-vampire]

...blowing the inner plannets dense clouds off the planet leaving a thinner gas bass.

Well, as the gas gets thinner, the sonic frequencies go up leaving less in the bass range. There just might be something to your idea.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I have not done the math on the theory but from the documentaries I have watched, it theorizes that our inner planets were once more dense in terms of more or less air. The sun expanded early on blowing off a bunch of the surface air. When I think about gaseous inner planet, I am thinking of one maybe a few times denser than they are currently. I also read that once the sun expands to the orbit of Mars, then the planet Jupiter will start becoming wind swept too. Again, I haven't done the physics to determine if Jupiter's gravity is high enough to prevent solar winds from striping it to a rocky core but I run it through my head a few times no and then.

Like a few other posters have pointed out that the current other planets discovered are close to the start and they are not wind stripped. In addition, Mercury is striped yet Venus is denser than earth and yet Mars is highly stripped. There is not really a correlation so I am most likely wrong...

Re:Smaller Planets?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

One strong hypothesis is that life couldnt exist on earth without a big planet (jupiter) out there sweeping up most of the space junk (asteroids, comets, etc) that comes falling into the solar system.

Yes, but this particular system is likely not to have any earthy planets as its gas giant is near the center of its gravity well. Thus, this planet helps suck in space junk.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cyberchondriac]

Even if we are belting out radio waves using every milliamp of power we possess, they are simply drowned out by the enormous radio source we orbit.

Not really. From everything I've ever read, it's said that we emit as much radio activity as a small star.
That, along with the fact that our radio "noise" isn't random, should help us stand out rather well, I'd think.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't done the physics to determine if Jupiter's gravity is high enough to prevent solar winds from striping it to a rocky core

Firstly, the consensus seems to be that Jupiter doesn't have a rocky core worth speaking of. Metallic hydrogen, maybe

Secondly, striping isn't Jupiter's style - it prefers spots, especially great red ones.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

That, along with the fact that our radio "noise" isn't random

I take it you've never listened to Rush Limbaugh.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Ctrl-Z]

I think you missed the joke.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes -- thats why there's plans for a space telescope in the next 10 or 20 years to look specifically for terrestrial planets.

So it'll point back at Earth, then?

Re:Smaller Planets?

[jkastner]

The Terrestrial Planet Finder is the next big mission to look for..umm..terrestrial planets.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Lord Ender]

That sounds silly to me. If something came toward Terra from the north or south, Jupiter could not do shit about it. Jupiter could only protect us if something were passing through Jupiter's orbit at the exact time Jupiter were at that point it its solar year. There is an incredibly small chance of that. If you don't believe me, install celestia (probably the coolest OpenGL software for linux) to see what a small spec even Jupiter is with respect to the size of the solar system.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[MyHair]

This site is so wrong.

(I laughed, too.)

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have also heard that gas giants are handy for sweeping the crap out of your planetary system.

But consider the method of observation: looking for the shadows they cast as they come across the face of their star. This would seem to imply (IANAAstronomer) that the period of the planetary year is short in order that the planet's shadow be noticable. Gas giant planet discoveries I have read about have 'years' that are various days long. In this case it spins around it's sun once every 3.5 days (from the article). If the period of the year is small then the orbit radius also must be small (or else the large angular velocity -> really really large linear velocity -> system escape velocity).

I don't know what having a super big planet way down in close to a star would do to the mechanics of the rest of the system, but I bet it wouldn't function much along the lines of our own Jupiter vacuuming up random planetkiller asteriods.

Oh, and space telescopes to look for earthlike planets sounds super cool and I think it will be mega rad to get a look at some.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[maxume]

Jupiter has a pretty fair gravitational pull. Things often collide with its gravity, and not the planet itself...

Re:Smaller Planets?

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

But that's because those are the only ones we're able to find. The method used looks for "wobbling" of the star caused by the planet's gravity, so if it doesn't sweep in close at some point, the effects just aren't detectable from this far away.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Xilman]

Secondly, striping isn't Jupiter's style - it prefers spots, especially great red ones.

Have you ever actually looked at Jupiter with your own eyes, suitably assisted with a telescope? Even a 10cm telescope is sufficient to see plenty of detail.

I can assure you it is most certainly striped (or "zoned" and "belted" as the professionals call it). The spots are much harder to see. Only the GRS is invariably present and even that can be difficult to see at times when its colour fades.

Paul

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Gondola]

Aren't Juniper -- oops typo -- Jupiter and Earth in the same elliptical plane? That would mean it's much more likely to sweep up relatively close debris than say, some random object out of the elliptical plane.

Of course I may just be barking at the moon; I'm not ejimicated in astronomy.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

You have some points but you're thinking a little too anecdotally. If something came at the earth from way outside the plane of the ecliptic, youre absolutely right that Jupiter couldnt do anything about it. It's a good thing that there's almost NOTHING way outside the plane of the ecliptic -- to come in at such an angle, it would most likely have been gravitationally deflected from something else. Most stuff to worry about comes in from the oort cloud, which is more amorphous than the kuiper belt or asteroid belt (hence the term cloud, not belt). Anything out of the belts will most likely be affected, or has been affected, by Jupiter at some point.

Now, as for something having to pass through Jupiter's orbit at just the right time, you're right -- its a big solar system. But the junk flying around doesnt fly very fast....and its not likely to hit anything. It's most likely to hit either the sun, or Jupiter, and thats the key. without the gas giants, all that junk is mostly likely to hit...earth.

Of course, stuff still does (ask the dinosaurs or the trilobytes) but at a low enough rate, and its small enough, that life can handle it.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[LiquidCoooled]

We orbit something thats definately not a small star.

It isn't big either, but its big enough to virtually wipe out any individual signal we can produce at this point.

Maybe in the future, we will create a source strong enough to outshine the sun, until then, any signal sent to a remote civilisation with our level of technology will be indistinguishable from background noise.

Of course, when we get telescopes that can resolve (along any part of the EM spectrum) the inner rocky planets of stars, then we will be able to interact with other species.

However, I am not very optimistic about this happening in my own lifetime.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[dmaxwell]

What about terrestrial sized moons in orbit about such a planet? A jovian size body at Mars distance from Sunlike star may well be able to host habitable bodies. I put the hypothetical jovian body at Mars distance because it will reflect a significant amount of energy onto it's moons. There also extra tidal heating to think of.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Igmuth]

No, you just didn't read the AC post to which he was replying.

Blockquoth the AC:

Good point - I have read the same. My theory is also that the inner rocky planets as in our solars system were once gasious giants. Early on in development, the sun burst in high activity blowing the inner plannets dense clouds off the planet leaving a thinner gas bass.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[the_2nd_coming]

actualy, the wobble is replaced by the dimming meathod. but the problem with that is you only see with the telescopes we have today jovian sized planets or larger that have very small periods of orbit. to pick up a system that has terrestrial plants or potential terrestrial planets we must do one of two things.

1) look at a star for 12 years and see if there is a dimming at an point that does not repeat more than once.

2) built a huge space based inferometer that can detect the dimming that is present when a terrestrial sized planet passes in front of the star.

personally I like the second one better because of all the other things we would be able to learn about those planets.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has ET gone home yet?

Re:Smaller Planets?

[It'sYerMam]

"without the gas giants, all that junk is mostly likely to hit...earth."

Erm... wrong.
You still have the sun to worry about, without which there would BE no life. There's still mars, venus and mercury, altogether making up more mass than earth. Therefore, junk is most likely to hit something other than earth (if anything at all)

On the other hand, the Oort cloud does pose something of a risk, due to the objects within it being very loosely in orbit - disturbances from other stars, the galactic core, et al, are enough to send thing flying inward.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[cephyn]

I mentioned the sun earlier as the #1 target. Jupiter was #2. If you take away the gas giants, Earth becomes the #2. Yes, #s 3,4,5 add up to more mass than #2, but its still #2. If you take away the gas giants, of any planet left, its most likely to be hit.

Re:Smaller Planets?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's true either, but why would you need a solid core at all, much less very big one?

Stars seem to be holding awfully lot of gas without a gigantic rocky core...

Neato

[ianbnet]

My only question is, how does a backyard telescope track the periodic dimming of a star? To my eyes, the things dim and brighten -- twinkle, if you will -- pretty much constantly.

Err, wait, never mind. Just read the Harvard press release and the "It took several Ph.D. scientists working full-time to develop the data analysis methods for this search program," bit.

Cool.

Re:Neato

[Uber Banker]

The Telescope did NOT find this planet. The Software did.

Re:Neato

[LiquidCoooled]

You can just see their long nights pouring over the data, trying to match it up.

prof1: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

prof2: Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.

prof1: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

Re:Neato

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet that if you average the light of the star over a long enough period you can remove random twinkles from atmospheric effects.

Re:Neato

[Xilman]

Scintillate scintillate globule vivific.
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific.
Loftily poised in the aether capacious
And strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

Paul

Re:Neato

[owlstead]

Sheesh, they might just as well have bought a bigger/better telescope then.

Detected dimming?

[dolphin558]

I find it hard to believe that the dimming was detected with such a small resolution. I'd have to look into this. If it were possible to detect exoplanets with backyard telescopes then shouldn't have they been discovered 2 decades ago? We knew that dimming was indicative of an exoplanet back then.

Re:Detected dimming?

[techno-vampire]

Yes, with a good camera attached to the telescope, the dimming could have been detected decades ago, but nobody was looking. Even if they were, it would have been almost impossible to spot the difference. You'd have to use a blink comparator, like they did in finding Pluto, and trying to spot a small dimming and brightening is much harder than seeing that a spot's moved.

Re:Detected dimming?

[stratjakt]

As others have said, the telescope didn't find the planet, nor did it's owner. The software found the planet.

All stars "dim" or twinkle to a regular viewer, due to our atomsphere. If it were just atmospheric stuff, the dimming cycle should be pretty much random. But software can find a pattern in the "dimming" that a human couldnt. (The "cycle" would last months, if not years, would it not)

2 decades ago this software didn't exist.

Re:Detected dimming?

[techno-vampire]

Not only would the cycle last longer, it wouldn't be a steady curve. It would have the same characteristics as an eclipsing binary, such as Algol: ------v------v------v------v with the dips coming as the planet transits the star.

Re:Detected dimming?

[ArbitraryConstant]

Resolution isn't wasn't necessary to make this technique work. Even the best telescopes have trouble detecting stars as more than point sources.

What matters is the quantity of light recieved per unit time. With the proper equipment on the end, even a small telescope can accurately measure very precisely the amount of light it recieves. I imagine the tricky part is eliminating other factors such as local environmental conditions.

Re:Detected dimming?

[Cobalt Jacket]

Except Betelgeuse.

Re:Detected dimming?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even the best telescopes have trouble detecting stars as more than point sources."

How can this be?

I recently looked at some straonomy pictures and saw images of galaxies far far away where you could see individual stars. Surely these galaxies are so very far away that they would cover no more of the sky than a star that is only a few lightyears away would? So why can we get such good images of them but not of individual nearby stars or planets?

Re:Detected dimming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because these galaxies are very far away but they still cover more of the sky than a star that is only a few lightyears away.

Re:Detected dimming?

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I recently looked at some straonomy pictures and saw images of galaxies far far away where you could see individual stars. Surely these galaxies are so very far away that they would cover no more of the sky than a star that is only a few lightyears away would? So why can we get such good images of them but not of individual nearby stars or planets?"

Unfortunately this is not so.

The angular size of a star is much smaller than the angular size of (say) the Andromeda Galaxy, which probably makes up a majority of the non-Milky Way pictures of galaxies that most people see.

A star is usually tens to hundreds of thousands of km across. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part this is true. A galaxy is tens to hundreds of thousands of light years across. That's about 10000000000000 times larger. However, a galaxy like Andromeda is less than a 100000 times more distant than they stars we're talking about. Therefore, we can see significant internal detail.

Re:Detected dimming?

[Anonymous Coward]

"nor did it's owner"

That's [That is] short for "nor did it is owner".

Re:Detected dimming?

[Shoden]

(The "cycle" would last months, if not years, would it not)

Or, in the case of this planet, the cycle is a mere 3 days.

That's great and all...

[cplusplus]

...but can they find my keys? I have a meeting in half an hour.

Re:That's great and all...

[StevenHenderson]

...but can they find my keys? I have a meeting in half an hour.

Good to see you are using that time wisely. :)

Re:That's great and all...

[cplusplus]

Ummm... yeah... I guess I forgot to mention it was a phone conference. And I found my keys.

4-inch-telescopre ain't much, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of those! All those new planets...

Re:4-inch-telescopre ain't much, but...

[meringuoid]

Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of those! All those new planets...

Perhaps you joke, but maybe it could be done.

There are a lot of small telescopes out there on computerised mounts. You just dial in an object and it will automatically go to and track that object.

Right, now manufacture a few hundred lightmeters with flash memory and USB connections. Advertise for amateur astronomers with GoTo telescopes to participate in this research programme. They go out each night and set their telescope to do the work. In the morning they detach the lightmeter and connect it to the PC to upload its data; the PC analyses it and sends its results home.

Then give a prize and a good deal of publicity to anyone whose home telescope discovers a new planet. Give them the naming privilege too. Hey, maybe it'll even encourage people to get telescopes who wouldn't ordinarily have been interested...

Imagine a Beowulf...

[serutan]

...never mind.

Not the telescope

[bhima]

The Telescope did NOT find this planet. The Software did.

Re:Not the telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a programmer aren't you?

Re:Not the telescope

[cephyn]

Well yeah, but Galileo found the moons of jupiter too, not his telescope. the telescope has no analytical properties, it takes an analyzer to do that (whether that be software or human brain wetware). The information analyzed by the software came from a "small" telescope, so you're nitpicking and being disingenuous. Everyone knows the telescope doesn't deserve congratulations, the people who designed the software do. I bet if you ask them how they found this planet, they'll say "well we started with a telescope of 4 inches, and THEN fed the information into a computer...." -- so technically, the telescope saw the planet first. ;)

Re:Not the telescope

[BarryNorton]

And, in fact, it's misleading to put it down to one telescope - yes one first saw it, but "the team at the CfA used a network of small telescopes" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/25/planet_fou nd/

Re:Not the telescope

[DarkHand]

Which is why we should parade the telescope around in a shower of confetti, just like The Inanimate Carbon Rod!

Re:Not the telescope

[bhima]

No I am not being " nitpicky and disingenuous"! There are thousands of telescopes like this that the users could not use to find this planet. The unique part is the code! Imagine when this is used from data gathered from larger scopes. I know this is /. but still you don't have to be so negative.

Re:Not the telescope

[bhima]

I can't help it!

Imagine a Beowolf...

Re:Not the telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that the software doesn't run on Windows, or there might be a pretty good chance that the planet might not even exist ;)

Re:Not the telescope

[Edie O'Teditor]

"well we started with a telescope of 4 inches, and THEN fed the information into a computer...."

Smart idea. They should patent that.

Re:Not the telescope

[Hognoxious]

technically, the telescope saw the planet first

Not really. One of my old profs said you look with your eyes, but you see with your brain.

Re:Not the telescope

[pclminion]

So you're saying that simply by running this software you can discover planets without involving a telescope in the process in any way?

Wow, that's some impressive software.

Re:Not the telescope

[OneOver137]

C'mon can't you just give a skosh more credit to the CCD camera attached to that scope?

Kudos

[mOoZik]

Kudos to the guy or gal who did this. I personally don't consider anything under 12 inches to be worthwhile, but now I'll think twice about ruling-out the potential of such small telescopes.

Re:Kudos

[smooth wombat]

I personally don't consider anything under 12 inches to be worthwhile, but now I'll think twice about ruling-out the potential of such small telescopes.

Boy am I glad you ended that sentence with the word 'telescope'.

Re:Kudos

[m2bord]

i've got my 8" dob and i love the daylights out of it. it's big enough to gulp down a nice spectrum while small enough to remain truly portable (meaning i don't need a semi and a forklift to move it). and the best thing is...at star parties...while the others are still cailbrating and aligning their scopes...i'm set up and running.

Re:Kudos

[aiabx]

Jay McNeil discovered McNeil's Nebula http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1179_1.asp with a 3-inch refractor. Granted, he had a CCD attached, but it's more evidence that size matters less than the technology using it.
-aiabx

Or..

[essreenim]

You could read this link to a more intersting story I tried to submit that was rejected. (Flamebait modding unnecessary - just mentioning)
Here =======} *

Re:Or..

[mclearn]

So I wonder how long it will be before each story has a "other cool stories that got rejected" thread in it? It might be the story peer-moderation that Slashdot has been sorely lacking since the beginning. Moderators can use their mod points to inc/dec the score for interesting -- and certainly geek-newsworthy stories like this one.

Very close

[Tango42]

The newfound planet is a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting a star located about 500 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Lyra. This world circles its star every 3.03 days at a distance of only 4 million miles, much closer and faster than the planet Mercury in our solar system, giving it a temperature of around 1500 degrees F. That's very close... wouldn't the Hydrogen be captured by the star? A jupiter sized rocky planet sounds unlikely. Unless it's a very small star, I guess...

Re:Very close

[cephyn]

Anything that size is a gas giant. I mean i guess a rocky planet would be possible, but i somehow doubt it as well. It just seems that something bad would happen...it would probably have to be some sort of weird molten ball of magma....and it would be gathering all kinds of gas around it too due to its massive gravity, so I guess it would still be a gas giant. This is what i get for thinking as I type.

The hydrogen would only be captured by the star if the gravity of the planet was too weak to hold the hydrogen, or the gravity at the planet's "surface" or whatnot was weaker than the gravity exerted at that surface by the star. Which is rather unlikely...sure its real close to the star but its a real big planet too.

Re:Very close

[greypilgrim]

It's what astronomers call a Hot Jupiter. The Hydrogen would be gradually ripped from the planet, and this would actually give the planet a "tail" of sorts. Theoretically, once enough of the hydrogen was ripped off the planet will eventually be destroyed. It's unknown how they formed, but it is believed that many of the Jupiter type planets, which are quite common, are actually failed stars, sometimes called Brown Giants.

Re:Very close

[Twanfox]

The star may also be siphoning off the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere, being that close. Such dynamics are highly difficult (if not impossible) to determine without another method of viewing the system (closer approach, top down, other odd characteristic).

Re:Very close

[Tango42]

Ok, that makes sense - it's big enough to get away with being that close. What about the temperature though? Aren't hot gases harder to keep hold of?

Re:Very close

[cephyn]

Gravity is gravity. maybe its got a plasmic atmosphere or something wildly exotic like that. who knows! but i say we find out. science is cool that way.

Re:Very close

[Tango42]

Brown dwarves, surely?

Re:Very close

[netwiz]

Actually, IIRC is that most near-orbit planets that large actually are rocky, have no atmosphere (the star blows it away, being so close), and radiate strongly in the infrared. They have silly surface gravities, too, something in the 300G range.

Re:Very close

[smooth wombat]

Aren't hot gases harder to keep hold of?

Eat a bowl of chili and let us know.

Re:Very close

[Tim C]

They have silly surface gravities, too, something in the 300G range.

Well, assuming a mass of around that of Sol (2E30), at a distance of 4 million miles, I get an acceleration due to the star's gravity of around 3m/(s*s).

(Hey, slashdot, how come no sup tag?)

That's from g = GM/(r*r), and converting r to metres.

Re:Very close

[greypilgrim]

Uhhh, yeah, that's what I meant. My bad.

Re:Very close

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems reasonable to suppose that if the orbit is stable then system would reach a point of equilibrium wherby the gravity of the planet was just strong enough to balance the gravity of the star at the furthest extent of the planet's atmosphere. If the star was stealing gas from the planet's upper atmosphere then the mass of the planet would be declining relative to the orbital velocity. If this were to continue then the planet would eventually begin to move outwards from the star until the aforementioned point of equilibrium was reached. I have not done a calculation to back up this scenario but perhaps someone else could either confirm this or expain why I am wrong...

Re:Very close

[Anonymous Coward]

not quite..The mass which is being lost by the planet is being added to the star so the mass of the star is increasing relative to the mass of the planet while the orbital velocity of the planet remains constant. The planet would have a tendancy to move closer to the star, which is now more massive, and thus lose more gas and the cycle would continue to repeat until the planet, or what was left of it, fell into the star. The equilibrium situation certainly exists, but there are many more unstable orbits than stable ones in a situation such as this.

Re:Very close

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anything that size is a gas giant.

>I mean i guess a rocky planet would be possible, but i somehow doubt it as well.

There is a tipping point where a rocky planet becomes massive enough that it will accumulate and hold on to an ever growing atmosphere.

The planet in question is near that size but below the tipping point. RTFA!

Re:Very close

[pclminion]

Anything that size is a gas giant. I mean i guess a rocky planet would be possible, but i somehow doubt it as well.

If the planet was rocky, it would be intensely hot. As material conglomerates to form a planet it must give up both kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy -- this energy appears as heat. A rocky planet the size of Jupiter would be so massive with so much leftover heat that it would glow noticeably.

The hydrogen would only be captured by the star if the gravity of the planet was too weak to hold the hydrogen, or the gravity at the planet's "surface" or whatnot was weaker than the gravity exerted at that surface by the star.

If that was the case (gravity of the star overcomes the gravity of the planet), the entire planet would be falling into the star. Either the planet and its atmosphere are BOTH orbiting a star, or NEITHER one is.

The reason hydrogen is able to escape planetary atmospheres has nothing to do with the difference in gravity between planet and star -- it has to do with the Maxwell distribution of particle velocities and the fact that hydrogen is so light that it can accelerate to speeds beyond the escape velocity of the planet.

Name?

[TiggertheMad]

Oooh, they have to name the planet 'Rupert'. We really need a planet, somewhere, to be named 'Rupert'. Douglas would be so proud...

Re:Name?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the "planet" they found out beyond Pluto (another "planet"). I was hoping they would call it Rupert. But they called it some boring name instead.

(Am too lazy to look up links, someone who wants mod points find the slashdot page and other links.)

you dont need a telescope

[nih]

just use your eyes? its just, just, just there! no wait, there! fs

Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[blanks]

Ill be the first to admit I know nothing about astronomy, or telescopes, but would this be a better solution to the large expensive singular telescopes? Why not setup dozens of these telescopes in an area, hooked to computers, seems like it would be faster to have many charting the solar system then a single one. I know their are limitations on distances these can umm "see", but it seems like this would be a good solution for finding items in our solar system.....

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[Anonymous Coward]

i think basically that is what they're doing... only instead of using lots of small telescopes in a single location, they use many large telescopes all over.

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[techno-vampire]

They already do exactly that with radio telescopes. Generally, it's harder to do it with visual light, because of the difficulty in combining several photographs. However, they do sometimes use photo-multiplier tubes and detectors. I wonder if it's possible to connect these to a video camera instead of film, send the signal back to a central point and combine the images that way. Anybody out there know anything about this?

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Actually this has been used for years at some of the larger observatories (ex VLT Array).

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[Shigeru]

The advantage to small telescopes is the ability to stare at a large section of the sky at once (in the case of the 10-cm telescopes used for this project, each exposure covers 6 degrees of sky). Compare this to the 10-meter Keck telescopes, whose imaging systems have fields of view of about an arcminute (1/60th of a degree). For transit searches, you want to keep staring at a star until you get lucky with a planet passing in front of the star, then confirm that as the transit happens again and again. So your best bet for optimizing your transit search is to look at a lot of stars at once, meaning a big field of view, which you get most easily from small telescopes.

It's not impossible to get large fields of view with large telescopes, but it takes a lot more effort. Check out the plans for building the 8.4 meter LSST for details.

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[CanSpice]

There already are a number of groups that do this. One of them is Spaceguard. There are a few others in the works (eSTAR, Pan-STARRS).

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[CanSpice]

Actually, what you're talking about is interferometry, which is next to useless for detecting moving objects. The problem with interferometry is that it gives you a very narrow field-of-view, which is exactly the opposite of what you want for detecting moving objects.

What the parent poster is talking about is having multiple telescopes looking at the sky independantly of one another. Smaller telescopes are better because they're cheaper and they generally have a wider field-of-view. Some projects that are doing things like this are eSTAR and Pan-STARRS.

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[CanSpice]

Actually, what you're talking about is interferometry, which is next to useless for detecting moving objects. The problem with interferometry is that it gives you a very narrow field-of-view, which is exactly the opposite of what you want for detecting moving objects.

What the parent poster is talking about is having multiple telescopes looking at the sky independently of one another. Smaller telescopes are better because they're cheaper and they generally have a wider field-of-view. Some projects that are doing things like this are eSTAR and Pan-STARRS.

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[techno-vampire]

What I was thinking of was collecting the light from several small scopes and combine it electronically into one image of a single object. Don't know if it'd do any good, but it sounds like it might.

Re:Different alternative to existing telescopes.

[CanSpice]

Yeah, that's what interferometry is. You take the light from two (or more) telescopes and combine it electronically to form an image that has the resolution of a telescope that's as large as the separation distance between your two telescopes. Like someone else said here, it's done mostly for radio astronomy, but some places are doing it with optical (VLT and Keck). It's just that it's a hell of a lot of work to get it working in the optical -- the smaller your wavelength the more difficult it gets, and optical is a lot shorter than radio.

One of the advantages to interferometry is that you get extremely good resolution, allowing you to see finer details than if you were just using a single telescope. One of the disadvantages is that you have a narrow field-of-view, so it's not very good for finding things that you don't know are there. It'd be like watching an auto race through a straw -- if you know where the car you want to watch is, you can find it, but if you don't, then all you might see occasionally is a blur of red through your straw.

Another planet announcement today...

[JohnnyDanger]

The European Southern Observatory also announced today that they had found a 14 Earth mass planet---the lightest yet discovered.

Although it is Uranus-sized, it is close to the star, and so it may not be similar.

ESO press release: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-2 2-04.html

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[saderax]

Call me an idiot but they found the lightest planet yet discovered and they are measuring it as a multiple of the Rarth mass. This means the lightest planet yet discovered is many times heavier than earth, and thus not the lightest planet. Can anyone with more knowledge on the subject explain this to me?

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure he meant extrasolar. ...the lightest planet yet discovered out of our solar system. I don't know if you are just trying to be technical, but come on.

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[Anonymous Coward]

This means the lightest planet yet discovered is many times heavier than earth, and thus not the lightest planet.

Way to nitpick, dude.

<pushes glasses back up on nose>Yeah, and the nearest star isn't Alpha (or Proxima) Centauri -- it's the Sun! <nerdish snort>

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[JackCroww]

Okay, you're an idiot.

They mean lightest extrasolar planet, or, for the idiots in the audience, lightest planet discovered outside of the Solar system.

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW! Big as Uranus? My sympathies to your wife or significant other.

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[jrockway]

He meant the lightest non-obvious planet. Some planets in our solar system are obviously lighter...

C'mon... Wake up and think!

Re:Another planet announcement today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely smaller planets such as Mercury and Mars are non-obvious also. It took us thousands of years to figure out their properties from the time we first started to analyze the motions of the heavens.

Confusing Units

[Paulrothrock]

How big is "Jupiter Sized?" My mind cannot comprehend such things. Is there a conversion for VW Beetles or Libraries of Congress?

Re:Confusing Units

[Jonathunder]

Jupiter's mass is about 1.9 x 10 ^ 27 kg.

The classic 1974 VW Beetle had a mass of 870 kg.

So a Jupiter-sized planet is about 2183908045977011494252873 VW Beetles.

I was unable to find the mass of the LOC. Sorry.

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time, put in commas.

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

> I was unable to find the mass of the LOC. Sorry.

Hahaha. And I wasted all my mod points on other stuff. Grr...

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

Jupiters about 317 times the mass of earth.

It's a gas giant so it also has about 1400 times the volume of earth. So 1400 earths could fit inside it.

ZXC

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't go using USA units. Over here in the UK we like to measure things in ATSOWs (Areas The Size Of Wales).

Re:Confusing Units

[5m477m4n]

No, No, I believe the Statue of Liberty is the correct unit of measurement for planetary objects.

Jupiter has a diameter of 71492KM at the equator
Which is equal to 1,537,462 Statues of Liberty.

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's kind of like visiting Mexico? :-)

Re:Confusing Units

[Iamthewalrus]

Yeah, but I bet that the average density of Jupiter is higher than that of a VW Beetle.

You'd get a totally unrealistic idea of Jupiter's size just by looking at that one number ;)

Re:Confusing Units

[damned_in_davis]

or boulder, colorado?

Re:Confusing Units

[Anonymous Coward]

size != mass.

Re:Confusing Units

[Sabaki]

It's so big Amazon.com could fit in there.

Re:Confusing Units

[mantera]

"So a Jupiter-sized planet is about 2183908045977011494252873 VW Beetles."

How much is 2183908045977011494252873? My mind cannot comprehend such numbers.

Amateur Astronomy

[FortKnox]

This really is a huge boost to amateur astronomy. All "size doesn't matter" jokes aside (gawd, that got old fast), an average amateur astronomer with a reasonably priced scope has a chance to find something new in space. That has to be exciting to anyone who looks up at the sky and wondered.

Who's gonna go get a scope now? I suggested Orion Scopes for price vs bells and whistles (if you are into the extra gadgetry and have the paycheck to not care about price, go Meade).

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[cephyn]

Yeah, as long as you have amateur (open source?) planet detection data gathering and analyzing software too.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the article? These were hardly amateur astronomers using amateur equipment. They used advanced techniques and a network of smaller telescopes for this find. Hardly something some guy in his back yard did. This was a major research project!!! Read please!!!

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[ergo98]

That has to be exciting to anyone who looks up at the sky and wondered.

I sincerely am not trying to be a jerk, and this isn't flamebait, but really: Who cares? There are millions, billions, or trillions of planets out there - and this means what exactly? We can't even reliably support missions to a little rock a stone throw away, much less set up a colony. Visiting the nearest star is, pardon the pun, astronomically more difficult.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in practical astronomy. Research such as ensuring that a big comet doesn't strike the Earth, or discovering asteroids full of lots of goodies that we might practically extract in our, or our children's, lifetime, or that we know so much about planets we might practically be able to visit in the next couple of centuries. However spending our resources on such unattainable information, especially given how quickly this information would be relegated obsolete once we start actually venturing out (imagine the information we'll attain overnight once we setup a large telescope on the moon), seems questionable.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[stratjakt]

This is actually a group of PhD's running some advanced data collection and aggregation software on a beowulf cluster of small telescopes.

This isnt, as the slashdot blurb suggests, some weekend warrior on his back porch who discovered a new planet.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[FortKnox]

granted, but most scopes make it easy to take multiple pics (most amateur astronomy pics on the web are multiple stacked pics). All you really need, then, is the software. I'm sure this research is good enough to either let the code out, or some bored astronomer coders will come up with something similar.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[kfg]

I believe you have misread the article. The network of telescopes was used so that many stars (12,000) could be surveyed in a reasonable amount of time. That's a social network, not an interferometer (astronmerese for "beowulf cluster") network.

The planet, however, was detected with a 4" telescope.

That leaves the software. The hard part is writing it. Distributing and running it is easy.

Yes, now some guy in his backyard who is willing to put in the time could do this.

KFG

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[linzeal]

I would be willing to bet that the moment we find another planet that appears to have life on it, IE volatile gases renewed in the atmosphere in accordance with primitive biological signs or if we find a more advanced alien society on a planet we will have little problem with spending the money required to research and build an interstellar craft capable of reaching them.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[ergo98]

There's a little itty bit of a gap between seeing the light from a distant star flickering, or detecting minor variances in the movement of a celestial object, and detecting life or life supporting factors. Even if we could somehow magically detect advanced life on a distant planet, we'd be more likely to send a nuke than a welcoming party.

Hardly surprizing to see my original message get moderated down - daring to question the sacred cow of astronomy gets the science fiction fans in a tizzy (the reaction is so unbelievably predictable). Well let me give you some sobering reality, L.Ron Hubbard fans - you will be long decayed in the ground before mankind has any sort of colony on any other planet. Your children's children (or rather your cousins childrens children) will be long dead before a human being leaves this solar system in non-ashes form.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, as long as you have amateur (open source?) planet detection data gathering and analyzing software too.

I never knew you could run Linux on telescopes...;)

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[Anonymous Coward]

... or if you're an American and want to buy a good quality/low priced Made in the USA telescope you can go with Discovery Telescopes instead of that Chinese garbage put out buy the vendors you mentioned.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[aiabx]

I care. I want to understand more about the universe. I believe that by understanding the universe better, I can understand my world and myself better. And that doesn't depend on whether I can make money by mining an asteroid.
And this is, in my mind, one of the steps that science takes to understand the universe. The idea that we shouldn't do research now because we can do better research in twenty years is a travesty of the scientific method. We do what we can now, because we want to know, and that is how we get to the moon.
I know I've been trolled, but it's something I wanted to say.
-aiabx

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[ergo98]

I know I've been trolled, but it's something I wanted to say.

That's right - it's something you disagree with, so therefore it's a troll. Congratulations on falling upon the weakest, most pathetic debating technique available to the lowly slashdotter.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[aiabx]

If you sincerely believe that nobody cares about the discovery of new planets using new technology, then I apologize for calling you a troll. But speaking on behalf of myself and other amateur astronomers/nerds, we do care. Furthermore, if you believe that your so-called "practical astronomy" would have been possible without centuries of pure science done without any hope of practical benefits, then you have a very poor understanding of the way science works. Neither Tycho nor Kepler could ever have prevented a collision with a comet, but their data and calculations made a practical benefit possible 400 years later.
-aiabx

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[aiabx]

btw, I like your ad hominem attack... astronomers being L. Ron Hubbard fans with no chance of breeding who need you to give us a dose of reality... hee hee. You're so funny.
-aiabx

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[ergo98]

Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I don't think "science fiction fans" is overly difficult to comprehend - this is a group that as a whole has an unbelievably optimistic perception of the pace of space travel, and any indications to the contrary are met by absolutely classic denial. Hardly surprizing as many are trying to escape this world for various social reasons, and the idea of hopping on a spaceship and jetting off to some other planet sounds ideal. Personally I'd rather we cure AIDS, solve starvation, clean up our environmental act, and generally live within the reality that we have right now. I suspect that you'll immediately misquote this and parlay that astronomy isn't in opposition to those prior points, again missing that I'm talking specifically about people who are so focused on their dream escape pod that they miss the point.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[Anonymous Coward]

However spending our resources on such unattainable information

Uh, we spent resources on attainable information. Just because we can't go there doesn't mean it's not interesting or worthwhile to study. Practical spinoffs are a nice benefit of scientific research, but they're not the whole point.

As I see it, the point of human civilization is to enable us to spend time and resources on endeavors greater than mere practical subsistence -- art, music, literature, philosophy, and yes, the advancement of human knowledge.

pecially given how quickly this information would be relegated obsolete once we start actually venturing out (imagine the information we'll attain overnight once we setup a large telescope on the moon)

"Why build it now, when we can do it better later?" You can use that argument to justify putting off any scientific research indefinitely, because technology is always improving. At some point, you have to just go ahead and do the damn experiment.

Besides, the information we gain now is part of what helps us develop the better technology later. Knowing something about the prevalence and properties of extrasolar planets helps us design better observing programs and technologies optimized to study them further.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[linzeal]

As a mechatronic engineering student who hopes to work on designing long term autonomous asteroid mining colonies but will do anything that is needed to get between here and there even if that means it will beyond my lifetime I'm sorry to hear a person so embittered for the future. By the way, I have protested Scientology at their recruitment centers in Phoenix and San Francisco and I don't much care for science fiction. I currently have 40 units out of 70 that are various undergrad science courses from astronomy to geology and I know many more people like me that have the ambition, intelligence, and love for humanity to make space colonization possible within a human lifetime.

There is no other choice in my eyes to solve long term population concerns without endless wars, enforced contraception/abortion or other undesirable ways to handle 'undesirables'.

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[linzeal]

We cannot expect to solve world hunger when the population and arable land mass is being slowly poisoned by the burdens of a hydrocarbon energy economy and we cannot escape a hydrocarbon economy until we build more fission power plants or invest the 100's of billions it will take to make fusion viable. However if we can begin mining operation on the moon we can use the vast amounts of Helium 3 to power humanity for 1000's of years without worry of poisoning our enviroment. Coal alone puts most of the mercury, uranium, and other nasty heavy metals in the enviroment. Solar cells require nasty chemicals to make and are not reliable in cloudy areas or at night, requiring a secondary power source and batteries.

Starvation is a problem of distribution when foodstuffs instead of being made for the benefit of all are propped up on a half-century old policy of encouraging subsidies, pesticides, and worse.

Personaly I see little hope of establising any sort of reform in the world we live in now and would hope that future generations abandon the planet and try new types of societies elsewhere.

The grand experiment in freedom and democracy in the US has failed, and I will not waste my precious time on this planet trying to rectify what cannot be turned from its dubious means to its obvious end. Rome anyone?

Re:Amateur Astronomy

[CanadianCrackPot]

You don't look up at the sky in the city very often do you. Size may not matter but light pollution does. In London Twinkle Twinkle will soon have the line "How I wonder if you're real"...
Heck someday if things get worse we may wonder if Neil Armstrong really landed on this mythical place called the moon.

Not the size...

[iamdrscience]

It's not the size of the telescope that matters, it's where you point it.

(it's a sex joke, do you see?)

Oh jeez . . .

[UnknowingFool]

Begin a Beowulf cluster of 4" jokes . . .

Some NASA dude

[A55M0NKEY]

I accompanied my Dad to the Stellafane the weekend before last where some NASA dude talked about how amateur astronomers with small telescopes 6-12 inches might collect useful data on planets partially eclipsing ( transiting ) stars by measuring and graphing the brightness of the star using a CCD.

I am not really into astronomy, but I wonder if one of those guys found it..

Once again

[AbbyNormal]

it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!

Re:Once again

[aiabx]

*sigh*. I don't know which astronomy joke fills me with more loathing... the telescope/penis size joke, or the "I can see the rings around Uranus" one.
-aiabx

Re:Once again

[IceFoot]

it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!

... and how much it cost to build, and how fancy the instrumentation is, and what kind of computers and software analyzing the data... size != complexity

Re:Once again

[IceFoot]

it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!

... and how much it cost to build, and how fancy the instrumentation is, and what kind of software analyzes the data, basically how big your research grant is...

Re:Once again

[AbbyNormal]

Oh oh! How bout this one? "Watch out for Klingons around Uranus!"

What do I win?

4 inches - slightly misleading

[numist]

4 inch diameter, damn

I was thinking this might also be a story on nanotechnology... a 4" long telescope.

oh well, back to work.

So much for Big Science

[Baldrson]

The International Linear Collider is the antithesis of this sort of discovery. There are opportunities all over the place for small science to make big discoveries but small science is far less likely to do so if big science is sucking up all the equipment and man hours.

There needs to be a lot more prizes awarded to amateur scientists for discoveries and fewer big science projects.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Todd Fisher]

There needs to be a lot more prizes awarded to amateur scientists for discoveries and fewer big science projects. First one to cure cancer gets an iPod.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hardly an amateur project, but that notwithstanding, both big and small science have their place. Big science can answer a lot of very fundamental questions that smaller projects never can, no matter how many of them you fund. ... and personally, if you ask me, I think a lot of mediocre research is already getting funded. Shifting funds to smaller projects means that they have to lower the funding standards even further. I don't think that many "potential big discoveries" are being squelched for lack of money.

Re:So much for Big Science

[cephyn]

Yeah no kidding. I mean, imagine all the discoveries small science could make if they just had astronomers and telescopes!

Gimme a break. Why pit one type of science vs. another? Why not just say all science and all scientific discoveries are great and are great for all of science?

Re:So much for Big Science

[Shigeru]

It should be noted that while the initial discovery made with a 10 cm telescope set up relatively cheaply, the confirmation that it was in fact a planet came using the multi-million dollar Keck telescope. Transit detections have a notoriously bad record for turning out to be planets (a few percent are actually confirmed, the rest are some other effect), so you need follow-up with high resolution spectra. And for an 11th magnitude star, that requires a large telescope like Keck.

They could have gotten away with a 3-meter like at Lick Observatory, in this case, given the large radial velocity amplitude, but for further-out planets Keck is the only way to go. Trying to do this part of the science with more 10 cm telescopes would be out of the question.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Baldrson]

First one to cure cancer gets an iPod.

A few billion dollars would be rational.

Re:So much for Big Science

[pclminion]

Or, we could stop blowing billions of dollars on killing people and get both at the same time.

Re:So much for Big Science

[k98sven]

Oh, that is just bull. "Big Science" isn't taking anything away from anyone. You think that money spent on big projects like ILC would really be going to science otherwise? Think again.

What determines if a project gets funding is if it's scientifically interesting or not. Of course, in the USA nowadays, you have to add more politics into the mix, but even a cynic must agree that the biggest factor is the science.

This whole "Big Science is taking our resources" thing is just sour grapes from researchers who are unhappy that the rest of the world didn't find their research as interesting, promising and important as they did themselves.

And I do research in an area which is hardly "Big Science". Au contraire, I'm a theorist and run calculations, most of them on high-end PC:s.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I'm a condensed-matter theorist, I do Monte Carlo simulations, and I don't think "Big Science" is squeezing me out; I think the ILC is a really promising project. "Big Science" mostly just squeezes out other Big Science. And you're right about your "do you think money would be going to science otherwise" comments, too. There was a lot of grumbling from non-HEP physicists that the SSC was starving their research, but it was a fallacy; in reality, if it weren't for the SSC, that money wouldn't be going to physics at all.

Re:So much for Big Science

[brindafella]

There are opportunities all over the place for small science to make big discoveries...

That's why I am an Amateur Radio perator (Links for USA, Australia UK).

Every little bit of Amateur education in radio and electronics helps interest people in the bigger science too, and there are some great techniques and articles produced by Amateurs, e.g. Ian Purdie VK2TIP on all sorts of subjects; spread-spectrum, digital signal processing, and packet radio; etc.

Re:So much for Big Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, useless, those big science projects.

Oh wait. Throw me a note when some nutcase spots the Higgs boson with his 10m modified CRT "particle accelerator", or proton decay in his bathtube.

Cosmic Thrill Seeker?

[ackthpt]

Will this method help find smaller planets? Jovian sized are all well and good, but Terrestrial would be more interesting.

All well and good? You gotta be kidding me! Someone with a hobby telescope spots something like this and it's like a hole-in-one in golf. Maybe you're looking for your next home, but at this stage even the people with the big radio scopes are excited by a planet find.

Maybe when we are able to warp space or whatever we'll get close enough to most of these stars to find something puny like an Earth size planet. For the meantime keep in mind the only way we know these things are there is from observation of the stars they orbit -- at this distance an Earth or Mars would be very hard to detect.

Re:Cosmic Thrill Seeker?

[The Wicked Priest]

Earth would be easy to detect, in the radio spectrum. (From within, say, 80 light years.)

Last time....

[psyconaut]

....I put my telescope between two moons, the girlfriend got pregnant!

-psy

Re:Last time....

[Idarubicin]

That's no moon!

Re:Last time....

[StevenHenderson]

...I put my telescope between two moons, the girlfriend got pregnant!

Girlfriend?

Re:Last time....

[Whizzmo2]

Next time, leave the "lens cap" on. I know the experience will be less enjoyable, but the cap will keep you safe from previously "inconceivable" problems :)

NO YUO

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm

[HarveyBirdman]

The newfound planet is a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting a star located about 500 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Lyra. This world circles its star every 3.03 days at a distance of only 4 million miles, much closer and faster than the planet Mercury in our solar system.

Again?

Am I the only one beginning to feel a little skepticism about some of these claims? They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

Yeah, maybe this is new info that modifies the older theories, and maybe this is the way things are but something just seems wrong here. They keep finding this situation of Jupiter sized (or larger) worlds hugging their parent stars. Could there be some other mechanism at work?

One other idea is that this is simply the sitation we are able to detect with current methods (dimming and wobble), but, geez, there's so many of them like this. My Spidey-sense has begun to tingle.

Re:Hmmm

[JackCroww]

Well, you've got one of two choices to make here.

Either the earlier theories of planetary formation, based entirely on what we observed here in the Solar system, are wrong...

-or-

They're right, and scores of astrophycsicists around the world who confirm the findings of their colleagues are all doing the planetary mass and orbital radius calculations wrong in the same way.

I know what I'm going with.

Re:Hmmm

[east coast]

Either the earlier theories of planetary formation, based entirely on what we observed here in the Solar system, are wrong...

Or perhaps there is more than one method of planetary formation. Let's face facts, even most knowledgeable people on this subject are still pretty much novices. We haven't even seen one of these planets yet, it's all one big theory that will be modified over and over again. If the theory of the planet size and speed based on wobble, dimming, etc is correct in its current form than that has to be one of the best-conceived theories ever. It'd be pretty close to a caveman theorizing gravity including the mathmatics involved.

Re:Hmmm

[rleibman]

Also, remember that most of the planets that are being found are being found because they are easier to find (more eccentric orbits, larger planets, etc.), planetary formation for these systems might also be different than average (close encounters with other stars early in star formation, stars more unstable than others, etc.)

Re:Hmmm

[Idarubicin]

Am I the only one beginning to feel a little skepticism about some of these claims? They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

I think it's mostly down to the fact that these large planets close to their parent stars are easier to see.

If you're looking at a Jupiter-sized object that orbits closer than Mercury, then you're going to have an orbital period on the order of days or weeks. On the other hand, if you want to detect a Jupiter-sized object orbiting at that same distance Jupiter does from our Sun, then your orbital period ends up as years or tens of years (Jupiter completes one orbit in a bit less than twelve years.)

Depending on the technique you use to detect a planet, you often need to show a pattern that persists through at least two or three consecutive orbits.

In the case discussed here, very small changes in brightness (less than 1%) were observed every time there was a transit (the planet passed between us and the other star); these events took place every three days. In principle, one could get sufficient data in a week or so. If we were looking at an object with an orbit like Jupiter's, we'd need to have at least a quarter century of careful monitoring of the star. Other techniques also require significantly more data collection time or more sensitive equipment as the planets get smaller and their orbits grow longer. The reason why we're detecting massive gas giants in close orbits is because they're the easiest planets to see. We're definitely not getting a random sample of all planets.

Yes, the planets we are seeing seem unusual, but they're still quite few in absolute number. Perhaps in twenty years when we can reliably start detecting rocky, Earth-type planets in Earth-type orbits we'll be able to make more definitive statements. Right now we're like biologists trying to understand human life--but only being allowed to study specimens weighing more than 600 lbs.

Re:Hmmm

[pclminion]

They keep finding giant planets closer to stars than Mercury, which seems to fly in the face of many previously established theories of planetary system formation.

Just because it's orbiting there now doesn't mean it had to have formed there. There are some theories of our own Solar System which place Jupiter in a much closer orbit billions of years ago, but it slowly migrated outward through interactions with other solar system bodies.

Re:Hmmm

[HarveyBirdman]

but it slowly migrated outward through interactions with other solar system bodies.

Or just for the winter. :-)

I'm sorry.

Simple

[HarveyBirdman]

Jupiter sized = 1 Jupiter

I hope this helps. :-)

Re:Simple

[PatrickThomson]

So... Jupiter is made of Flainian Pobble Beads?

SETI for telescopes?

[Tony Shepps]

This story makes me think. What if all the 4" telescopes around the world were networked, computer-operated, and all captured sections of sky at all times when the users weren't using them? Then what if the images were combined at some central place and location and errors corrected for and whatnot?

Re:SETI for telescopes?

[astro-g]

the cost of doing that would be, well, astronomical.

much better to build a few sky scan telescopes, ayt good locations. that way you can trust the data, and its contolled enough that the relatively small number of astronomers can analyse the data.

the bigger scopes can also see much fainter stars.

Re:SETI for telescopes?

[pixelated77]

Shouldn't this somehow get modded as "modified beowulf cluster posting" ?

Re:SETI for telescopes?

[dbirchall]

You meant to say:

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of 4" telescopes.

HTH.

I am more intrigued by the speed...

[Zaphrod]

I am more intrigued by the speed of the planet. The Earth moves around the sun at about 66,000 miles per hour where this planet must move at almost 800,000 miles per hour.

Re:I am more intrigued by the speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get 2*pi*r/3.03/24 = 345,609 mph.

Unless my math is wrong.

Re:I am more intrigued by the speed...

[pclminion]

From the radius and period of the planet's orbit you can calculate the star's mass: M = 4*Pi^2*R^3/(G*T^2)

Where R is orbital radius, G is gravitational constant, T is orbital period.

Plugging into Google gives a mass for the star of 2.3*10^30 kilograms. Almost exactly equal to our sun's mass.

(Offtopic note -- I love Google calculator. It normalizes all units to SI automagically!)

Re:I am more intrigued by the speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you get that?

If we assume that the orbit is a circle, then the lenght of the orbit will be: 4*2*Pi=25Million miles.

25Million/72.72 hours = 343000 miles per hour.

Re:I am more intrigued by the speed...

[myowntrueself]

so, uh, what sort of orbit, planet size etc do you need for an orbital speed exceeding c?

What if they determine we're vermin?

[davidsyes]

And may they kick our squish our asses the moment we bring up:

-investment
-annuities
-tract
-amenities
-RO I
-license
-heir
-appreciation
-depreciation
-land rights
-easements
-right-of-way
-free trade
-equal rights
-zone
-ordinance
-tax
-duty
-immigrati on

and more... Until some more intelligent consensus out there deems we're FIT to be out there. I can see it now: humans zoning and carving up the Moon, Mars, and anything else rather than fixing problems down here.

If SETI has such small odds of finding life, then what the hell are we wasting the money for? even if we DO find indications of an advanced civilization, they'll likely be dead by the time we draft and send a "Hello" message, or they'll have been on the way for who knows how long, arriving here to eradicate us or who knows what, if they determine we're vermin.

David Syes

Harvard: Men of Genius

[AhabTheArab]

In this artist's conception, the planet appears larger than its star because the planet is being viewed from close by.

And this is coming from Harvard? I thought they were smart and would have the ability to make basic inferences.

Re:Harvard: Men of Genius

[gt25500]

All this time I thought my hand was bigger then the sun. Wait... it still doesn't make sense, how can I block the sun with my hand?

Re:Harvard: Men of Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

They are smart. They just had to explain it simply so you wouldn't be confused.

A ground based telescope...

[Kaldaien]

Most interesting of all is that this new planet discovered optically was done by a ground based telescope. With the distortion from our atmosphere I'd have thought ground based optical exploration to be impractical. Most planets discovered outside of our solar system have been done with Spectroscopy and Interferometry. Hubble's had only limited success finding a planet optically. To find a planet with such a relatively inexpensive ground based optical telescope must be a major blow to NASA's ego ;)

Re:A ground based telescope...

[pclminion]

Most planets discovered outside of our solar system have been done with Spectroscopy and Interferometry.

Spectroscopy is definitely the way they determine the chemical makeup of the discovered planets, but I was under the impression that the discoveries themselves were primarily by measuring the wobble of the central star, or by looking for periodic dimming of the central star.

ob /.

[5m477m4n]

I, for one, welcome our new Jupiter sized overloards.

Accomplishments...

[Sandman69]

Obviously 4 Inches is more than enough, provided you use it properly!

Angry Mob Says. . .

[uberjoe]

"Now lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!"

Size/quality

[duckHole]

Even tho the size of these scopes is comparable to amateur equipment, the quality is quite a bit better:

These telescopes (STARE, located on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, PSST, located at Lowell Observatory, Arizona, and Sleuth, located at Mt. Palomar, California) are being described individually elsewhere (Dunham et al. 2004; Brown et al. 2004). Briefly, all 3 are small-aperture (10 cm), wide-field (6 degree), CCD-based systems with spatial resolution of about 11 seconds per pixel. from the technical report

Also note that the observations were made by all three scopes in sync, and the resulting photometrics were used to calculate the actual brightness variation. Lots of opportunities here for amateurs, but more than just point & shoot.

That's not a planet (moon)...

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

that's a space station.

Cue the Imperial March.

Keck was privately funded

[Baldrson]

It should further be noted that the Keck telescopes are the only privately funded telescopes on Mauna Kea.

It's one thing for a bunch of anonymous bureaucrats who are spending other people's money collected by government force to spend it on a huge pork-barrel Big Science project that doesn't have to produce anything for anyone except votes. It's another thing for private philanthropists to back a major investment (still vastly less costly than the Hubble Space Telescope, BTW).

Re:Keck was privately funded

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing for a bunch of anonymous bureaucrats who are spending other people's money collected by government force to spend it on a huge pork-barrel Big Science project that doesn't have to produce anything for anyone except votes.

Well, votes and the advancement of science, which produces not only direct benefits to scientists, engineers, machinists, etc., but indirect benefits to everyone in the world who is curious about the universe we live in.

Question,

[chadjg]

Once this new software package is installed and the scope hooked up, how much effort do these searches take, and how smart do the searchers have to be?

I am SO guessing on this, but there can't be that many super smart astronomer types out there and it may be a waste to have them on less than awesome machines. Can a non-moron, non-specialist handle the datagathering and analysis with this package? I'm mostly just curious about this.

Re:In Related News...even less relevant...

[Anonymous Coward]

...an one inch telescope discovers Uranus!

Votes, not science

[Baldrson]

My original statement is correct and complete. When Congressmen vote funding for a big science project the only thing it has to produce is votes for them during the next election.

Re:Votes, not science

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have to produce votes for them, either. That's one of the goals they may have for it, just like the advancement of science is another.

Re:Votes, not science

[Anonymous Coward]

Philanthropic, privately funded science doesn't have to produce anything scientifically valuable, either. If it doesn't, then presumably they won't continue to fund it -- but the same goes for Congress.

Kepler probe will watch 100,000 stars in 2007

[peter303]

This method of looking for planetary transits will be tried on 100,000 stars simultaneously by the Kepler space probe in 2007. Kepler points a 95 megapixel camera at the same patch of the sky for several years. They expect to discover about 900 planets, of which 50 may be Earth-size. Their assumptions about planetary size distribution and detectability are given on their website.

Re:Kepler probe will watch 100,000 stars in 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

Kepler probe will watch 100,000 stars in 2007

All your stars are belong to us.

You don't know how the government works.

[Baldrson]

I've gotten legislation passed onto law reforming big science.

Let me give you just a clue about how the government works:

It doesn't care about pedantic distinctions such as the one you make between goals that are vital to politicians and necessary conditions for their action. What it does care about is carrying the vote.

Indeed, the problem is the production of people like yourself who either can't operate in the real world are are operating in the real world of big science politics replacing rational discourse with such pedantic sophistry. Such funding is profoundly destructive to science and rationality.

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[MagicDude]

SKINNER
Now, this morning we're going to be mapping a small square of sky that's thought to be empty. It's my hope that it's not.

BART
So what am I supposed to do exactly?

SKINNER
Just write down my findings as I give them to you. Six hours, nineteen minutes, right ascension, fourteen degrees, twenty-two minutes declination... no sighting.

BART
Mm-hm.

SKINNER
Six hours, nineteen minutes, right ascension, fourteen degrees, twenty-three minutes declination... no sighting.

BART
Mm-hm.

The scene fades to later.

SKINNER
(excitedly) Six hours, nineteen minutes, right ascension, fourteen degrees, fifty-eight minutes declination! ...no sighting. Did you get that one Bart?

BART
Hell no.

SKINNER
Good.

In other news... a small exoplanet just found

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, an european team at ESO has just found the Smallest 'Earth-like' planet seen.

Only 14 times the mass of Earth, rotating around a star the size of the sun.

They use a new tool that should be very promising in the futur.

Spare me the condescension

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad hominems aside, that's nonsense. Despite your cynicism, big science is somehow still not filled with expensive projects that don't produce results; most of them do ultimately pay off scientifically (HST included). For every ISS, there's a Fermilab, a LIGO, etc. Some don't, of course, but this is less true than the myriad of mediocre small-science projects that get funded under less scrutiny. And big-science projects that aren't working out as planned can get cancelled; witness the SSC.

The main danger is in the really long-term projects where the payoff isn't expected for decades, because they're so divorced from immediate consequences; the projects that take 10 years or less need to effect demonstrable progress on the advancement of science in order to continue to garner votes. While not impossible, it's still hard to garner votes supporting a project that doesn't have scientific merit.

Re:Spare me the condescension

[Anonymous Coward]

The question isn't whether they produce something or not-it is a question of would the same public funds expended differently produce more results per dollar. There is every indication that they would.

Re:Spare me the condescension

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every indication", eh? It wouldn't be too much to ask for you to justify your claim then? How should the funds be better expended? And how are you supposed to objectively measure "more results", anyway?

What would our Solar System look like?

[LnO313]

I always wonder when I read one of these articles about detecting planets, what would our Solar Sytem look like? Would these methods of analyzing dimming and wobble be able to detect more than just Jupiter? Most that I've read being discovered have periods of a few days not 100s of days. Are these methods getting better that eventually with enough data they can spot and discern a 'complicated' systems as ours?

You can buy scopes better than that!

[burris]

When it comes to 4-inch refractors, there are dozens of choices available to the amateur. High color correction probably isn't that critical for the transit surveys so the scopes used probably aren't as good as the high-end apochromats available to amateurs. Astro-Physics, Takahashi, Televue, and Thomas M. Back are just a few of the better ones.

This assumes that you consider $3,500 to be an "amateur" telescope. Serious amateur, yes. Note, to get serious about high quality imaging you need to spend at least as much on your mount. Then there are the Peltier-cooled CCD cameras...

burris

Adaptive Optics correct for Atmospheric distortion

[dbirchall]

Atmospheric distortion (exacerbated by humidity, wind shear, temperature differences, how much "airmass" you're looking through, etc.) has nasty effects on "seeing," yes.

But... remember Reagan's "Star Wars" space defense progam? One of the very few useful things we got for all that money was a technology called "adaptive optics." Basically, technology that takes the "twinkle" and the "wobble" out of stars.

Just about everything optical (and maybe even infrared) on Mauna Kea has some AO ability nowadays, using tertiary mirrors that can be adjusted ("tip-tilt") or deformed many times per second by computer-controlled actuators, and/or Orthogonal Transfer CCD's co-developed by University of Hawaii and MIT.

I work a few nights a month on Mauna Kea, and have seen an OTCCD instrument (OPTIC) in use on UH's 88-inch telescope (which also has a simple tip-tilt system available, I think), and it's pretty neat technology. I'm hoping the technology will lead to better image-stabilization technology for photography and videography... and I'd also like to see it "trickle down" to amateur telescopes. :)

SPACE LASERS INSTEAD OF TELESCOPES

[newpath4com]

Perhaps -uhm, just a thought here- maybe we should be positioning some HUBBLE-size Lasers closer in to the Sun, and use them to blast these intruders before they hit us. Otherwise my non-polluting compressed air engine won't be doing us much good will it? Yep. Have un bueno dias!