Slashdot Mirror
Hubble Snaps Photo of Extrasolar Planet
iamlucky13 writes "Space.com has reported that a Hubble Space Telescope photo supports with a very high degree of confidence that a picture taken by the European Space Observatory does indeed show an extrasolar planet. As many readers know, planets outside our solar system are typically found by watching for wobbles in a star's orbit or for dimming caused by the planet crossing in front of its star. The ESO and Hubble images would represent the 1st and 2nd times that planets outside our solar system have been directly detected. The planet is about 5 times as massive as Jupiter and orbits a brown dwarf a little farther out than Pluto orbits our own sun."
From the article:-
"University of Arizona astronomer Glenn Schneider, who led the new study, said he's 99.1 percent sure the object is in orbit around the brown dwarf."
How does one calculate the probability of accuracy and arrive at an exact figure like 99.1%? I mean, isn't this self-contradictory, or am i missing something?
Still if we can get pictures of something five times bigger than Jupiter at this distance . . .
Imagine a upgraded Hubble or Hubble II.... the implications of photographing and analysing planets and their atmospheres (by measuring the light sprectrum or even photographing it) could be enormous. Imagine one snapping a Earth type.
Though it'd give fire to the people opposing interstellar travel ('why go there and waste a lot of money when we can photograph it safely from here?'). At least we'd be able to handpick targets for future interstellar probes, rather than firing them blindly at a star and possibly getting nothing. I am hugely fascinated by this, and it shows the value of Hubble and why we must keep it, and the design itself.
In this image it looks like the planet has a bump on the lower left side. Could this be a mega-Olympus Mons (on a gas giant, hmm)? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's just noise, but it's fun to over-analyze images.
The world is everything that is the case
they are able to find a _planet_ that is away more than 225 light years but they aren't able to point their telescopes toward the moon to find out if the vehicles from the moon landing are really there...
Can someone explain that to me?
Is it because they are only finding out by radiation instead of visual photography?? the moon has no atmosphere.. i just vant imagine tehre is no telescope orbiting our earth which isn't capable to take pictures from the moon in very high resolution?
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
Imagine a upgraded Hubble or Hubble II....
Forgot what series it was (I think it was some six part BBC series) but the idea is to have a satellite array out in space, similar to how they have ground based arrays. They would be aligned via laser. They made it sound like this was something that was going to be done sometime around 2015, or so.
The implications were that they would then be able to see earth sized planets directly, and possibly even be able to analyze the atmosphere of the planet.
This new planet is 1.5x the size of Jupiter and 5x Jupiter's mass. Its orbit is 30% farther out from its star than Pluto is from our sun. To put things in perspective, Jupiter has been described as a brown dwarf star, since it is mostly gaseous and gives off more radiation than can be accounted for by solar reflection. This new planet-star relationship is closer to a binary star system than to our 365 day whirl around the block at a balmy 65 degrees F. (I make a point about the design and structure of their system in comparison to ours, so I won't argue with astronomy buffs about the particulars.) It's still interesting, but it's not like there's much possibility of a Starbucks there yet.
-j
If we can a plant 225 light years away, does that mean we have definitively ruled out the existence of planets in the solar systems close to us? If so, are planets rare? /me notes to look this stuff up later this evening.
Software Wars
Actually for me it's the opposite. I know that there was a time, during my own lifetime (and I'm just 27) when astronomers couldn't detect exoplanets by any means, even indirect means. And now finally... we get a tiny glimpse of an exoplanet for the first time. For me it's amazing to think that we finally have that technology to actually see something so tiny that is so far away. I think that it's the fact that it's just a few pixels that makes it the more fantastic, that is, it's on the edge of our technological horizon. And I know it will get better, and fast too. Within a few decades we will be able to see Earth sized planets, I am sure of it. This is truly something to celebrate!
If the "planet" is still moving in concert with the star in a few months, then I'll believe it.
There is the Darwin project to see earth-like planets and analyze the electromagnetic spectrum to determine the atmosphere composition.
Reminds me of a short story I read years ago...
Colonists gave up everything they own for a chance to colonize a new planet, but they get to be first.
Only thing is, right after they leave Earth, FTL travel is invented. So by the time they get there, planet is already fully colonized and they end up getting a raw deal.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling