Spitzer Telescope Discovers Planets Via Infrared

DirtyJ writes "Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time discovered two extrasoloar planets by directly detecting light from the planets themselves. Usually planets are discovered by indirectly inferring their presence from the wobble of star they orbit, but Spitzer has been able to directly detect these objects at Infrared wavelengths. Nifty conceptual images and videos are available."

Comments

Ob-Infrared-Ditty

[Otto]

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.

Re:Ob-Infrared-Ditty

[ajs]

Please, if you're going to snag the text, cite it:

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head.
I can see by infra-red.
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

Life, the Universe and Everything
by Douglas Adams, 1952-2001

Hot Stuff!

[billstewart]

Not only did they discover them using infrared, but one really interesting thing about this is that it's the first time that they've directly seen light from one of the planets they discovered, as opposed to previous discoveries which have only seen the light of the star being occluded as the planet passes in front of it. Really nice.

not discovered, but observed

[heidi]

the planets are not newly discovered. they were previously known, but not directly imaged before.

And they call this science?

[Mindwarp]

If I were providing the conceptual images I would DEFINITELY have included more orbiting alien Death-Stars. Honestly, these conceptual artists have no imaginations!

Spitzer

[someguy456]

Is anyone else interested in the techical specifications of the Spitzer? I hadn't heard of it till today...

from About Spitzer

The Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly SIRTF, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility) was launched into space by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 25 August 2003. During its 2.5-year mission, Spitzer will obtain images and spectra by detecting the infrared energy, or heat, radiated by objects in space between wavelengths of 3 and 180 microns (1 micron is one-millionth of a meter). Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Consisting of a 0.85-meter telescope and three cryogenically-cooled science instruments, Spitzer is the largest infrared telescope ever launched into space

Re:Spitzer

[CanSpice]

Glad to see that the uninformed are still able to type. Kudos!

Infrared pictures are just not as pretty as those made in visible light.

Oh really?

And all pretty cosmic phenomena Spitzer can see are also observable by the Hubble telescope.

Not entirely true, as they operate over different wavelength bands. Spitzer operates in the mid- to far-infrared, whereas the longest wavelengths Hubble can view are in the near-infrared. Different wavelengths view different processes and different objects. Did you ever stop to think why there are different types of telescopes? It's because what's revealed in one waveband is invisible in others.

That, and perhaps the fact that the revelation that starts are, indeed, hot, was not a groundbreaking enough discovery to move the Spitzer into the visible spectrum.

This sentence makes absolutely no sense at all.

article is DUI on the actual technique

[OneOver137]

While they did discover them using IR, the technique was looking at eclipse intensity depth rather than direct observation. Good stuff though!

Further info on Spitzer and the extrasolar planets

[astrobabe]

Yes Spitzer has been in science operations for over a year now. These detections were made with the two imagers- IRAC and MIPS. IRAC is the shorter wavelength camera (the observations were done at 8 microns) and MIPS the longer wavelength camera (observations done at 24 microns). Both planets are approximate 1000 degrees Kelvin and are Jupiter class with respect to mass.HD 209458b is 0.68 times the mass of Jupiter and has a radius about 1.35 times Jupiter's. The second planet- TrES1 has a mass equal to 0.76 Jupiter masses and is 1.04 times the radius of Jupiter. (and I do work for Spitzer and knew about these discoveries about 2 months ago when they first came into our Helpdesk which i run)

Re:IR temperature reading?

[astrobabe]

While clouds are significants sources of albedo, the Earth would still not appear very "hot" as our atmosphere is general is quite cool. A planned instrument for a Mars orbiter will likely contain a spectrograph which will be used to look back at Earth to give astrobiologists an idea what the atmospheres of extrasolar planets with life may look like from a distance.