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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. "
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.....
TruePunk | Games
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. ;)
Moo.
The Telescope did NOT find this planet. The Software did.
Yeah, as long as you have amateur (open source?) planet detection data gathering and analyzing software too.
Moo.
There needs to be a lot more prizes awarded to amateur scientists for discoveries and fewer big science projects.
Seastead this.
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.
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.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
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.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
*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
Just this guy, you know?
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.
"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.
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?