Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Extra-solar Planet Imaged

Posted by michael on from the icu dept.

bdb111 writes "European astronomers have taken what may be the first picture of an extra-solar planet. The possible planet orbits a brown dwarf star 230 light years away."

2 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Awesome! by sartin · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did identify it as 2M1207 at 230 light years. A quick google suggests this set of coordinates from some Prospero observations in February, coordinates reproduced here (the original file has observation configuration as well):

    # Prospero Observation Template File
    # Created: 2004 Feb 12 [9:36:32] by saveobs.pl Version 2.2
    # For: John Gizis
    #
    PROJECT=UDEL-04A-0005
    IMGTYPE=OBJECT
    OBJECT=2M1207
    RA=12 07 33.4
    DEC=-39 32 54
    EQUINOX=2000.0
    MODE=DUAL

  2. Re:Awesome! by Shigeru · · Score: 5, Informative

    The preprint of the paper lists the parent brown dwarf as 2MASS J12073346-3932539 , which is indeed at the above coordinates. The candidate planet (much in the same way Ralph Nader is the candidate president, but there's my bias showing) will be 0.46 arcseconds south and 0.63 arcseconds east.

    In case I didn't discourage any amateur astronomers thus far, here's some more: That's a separation of 0.77 arcseconds, when the seeing at most sites is of order 1 arcsecond. The companion is 100 times brighter than the parent brown dwarf in the K band. The parent brown dwarf has a K of about 12, and for an M8 spectral type, that's a V-magnitude of about 19 or 20. For those of you scoring at home, the parent brown dwarf is one million times fainter than anything you can see with the human eye.

    The companion is an even redder object, so the colors will be much, much worse at V (there's a reason we try to detect these in the infrared). With a state-of-the-art AO system (look what we did with the same system earlier this year imaging the surface of Titan) on an 8 meter telescope with excellent infrared detectors, the companion lies one magnitude above the detection limit on their sensitivity/separation curves.

    Sorry to depress people looking forward to pointing your telescope at this system tonight, but if it makes you feel better, it's probably not a planet.

    I just checked that RA, by the way. It's behind the sun right now. You'll have to wait until January to observe it. Or to point your telescope there and not observe it, as the case may be.