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Hubble's Exoplanet Pics Outshined by Keck's
dtolman writes "Scientists at the Keck and Gemini telescopes stole the thunder of Hubble scientists announcing the first picture of an extrasolar world orbiting a star. Hubble scientists announced today that they were able to discover an extrasolar world for the first time by taking an actual image of the newly discovered exoplanet orbiting Fomalhaut — previous discoveries have always been made by detecting changes in the parent star's movement, or by watching the planet momentarily eclipse the star — not by detecting them in images. Hubble's time to shine was overshadowed though by the Keck and Gemini observatories announcing that they had taken pictures of not just one planet, but an entire alien solar system. The images show multiple planets orbiting the star HR 8799 — 3 have been imaged so far."
A planet orbiting Fomalhaut? Well, it seems Gene Wolfe was prescient in his work The Book of the New Sun when one of his characters contacts a wise civilization there on, as Wolfe uses the Arabic name, "the Fishes' Mouth".
From your friendly neighborhood grammar nazi
This is exhilarating news, that we are most likely not alone in the universe (and beyond). Our solar system is not unique!!
This whole galactic mess has some more meaning, today. We are like infants, opening our eyes for the first time -- how far we have to go (if we don't destroy ourselves soon).
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Planet b looks like it might have a dark set of saturns rings ?!?!?!?!
Hello,
I think the discovery was made by the team led by Paul Kalas:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/index.html
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
that's not a planet...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthugha
This came out after I posted the article... Hubble presents - Fomalhaut B! This graphic is particularly nice!
I wanna live on the left dot.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Alien vs Predator made even more sense than the comparison in the headline...
love is just extroverted narcissism
It's only 26 light years away. That just enough time for LOLCATS to stop being lame and starting being ironically retro.
So planets look a lot like noise. They really aren't all that much different than the expected noise levels on the images. Especially on the first one from Fomalhaut.
This ain't no solar system... it's the all seeing Eye of Sauron! Creepy.
What a big ass telescope pissing contest looks like...
And here I thought the headline would read: we can now see planets and stars beyond.
NO SIG
Speck and Gemini telescopes stole the thunder of Hubble scientists announcing the first picture of an extrasolar world orbiting a star.
Seriously though, it is a shame that this will not get wider news coverage. Slashdot has had some interesting articles in the past few days, first the 11,000 temple and now this. This is slashdot after all, let us not dwell on the cosmic or profound. Queue the speck puns in 3... 2... 1...
they are massive, young, hot planets that are probably mostly gaseous and completely inhospitable. They'd get along great with my ex!
In the hubble picture, does anyone else see the shadow of the Enterprise?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It's a regular pulitzer.
"Computer, Zoom in"
no, not Sauron. That is clearly the Mote in God's Eye.
As deed holder via the International Star Registry, that includes a deed on any planets in orbit, I forbid it. Why, there might even be rich deposits of diamelles and/or Ginsu steak knives on that planet. I'm not giving it up without a fight.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
From the "My English is goodly" department, more like.
At least you managed to use the apostrophes correctly, Timothy.
On Thursday 13th November 2008, Gemini Observatory in coordination with several institutions released the first images of an exo multi-planet system around star HR 8799 in the constellation of Pegasus. The discovery was made at Gemini North using the adaptive optics system ALTAIR and NIRI as the infrared imager on October 17, 2007. Follow up and confirming observations were made on the Keck II Telescope and Gemini North. Adaptive optics played a crucial role in obtaining these historic images of a young extra-solar multiple-planet system. The estimated age of the system implies planetary masses between 5 and 13 times that of Jupiter. These giant planets orbit at roughly 25, 40 and 70 times the Earth-Sun separation around their host star which is about 128 light-years from our sun. For more details see www.gemini.edu.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
I was an astrophysics major in college for about 2 years but gave up on it because it seemed so speculative. To infer the existence of a planet around a star from the 'wobble' we see in the position or spectrum of the star may be sound science but it hardly grabs the imagination.
THIS, on the other hand is truly awesome. Seeing is believing I guess. Unless some kid is dicking around with Photoshop -- or more likely GIMP.
Not entirely sure why the summary touches on one being overshadowed by the other.
On the contrary, the two works are complimentary, and it is thus no coincidence that they have been released at the same time. Hubble shows an old cold planet on the edge of a solar system, while Keck shows some very young hot infra-red emitting planets close to their star. The two discoveries help elucidate the workings of other solar systems - and each is just as valuable as the other.
Nice pictures. That looks like an excellent spot for a hyperspace express bypass.
"pictures of not just one planet, but an entire alien solar system"
Isn't there just 1 Solar system? The one with the star Sol. All the rest are just planetary systems.
Wouldn't it be harder to take a photo of a single planet than an entire solar system? And if so, then the Hubble team's accomplishment still means a lot more.
You know, I bet if we follow THESE planets, we can't help but reach Planet X!
I don't know how you do it Dodgers.
How the [bleep] did you read it that way?
If you want to sleep until 2085, be my guest. I can help knock....I mean put you out that long, but I'll have to leave the waking part to the future experts.
Table-ized A.I.
What they have right now can give a pretty accurate idea of the atmosphere on that planet. Pass the light from that dot through a diffraction grating and the spectrum will tell you which gases are present in what proportion in the atmosphere, and what is their temperature.
So planets look a lot like noise. They really aren't all that much different than the expected noise levels on the images. Especially on the first one from Fomalhaut.
From far enough away, yes. Yes they do. For example, here's Earth from just outside the solar system, and the basis for Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/601/PIA00452.tif (TIFF image)
That light blue pixel on the right is us. All of us. Taken from 6.4 billion kilometers away.
Deadpixel, indeed.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Nifliik blinked, please retake it.
Table-ized A.I.
I really love these discoveries, because it means someday a game like Spore or Elite will have the actual stars, with the actual planets, with the actual atmospheres. These planets will all be named, etc. etc.
When I was playing Elite/Frontier years ago, I (and I believe scientist too) weren't even 100% sure extra-solar planets existed.
How is it that pictures can be taken of a planet 26 light years away, yet the moon landing site cannot be photographed?
One of the worn out excuses is that the pixel angle is too small to see things that small.
Well, I would like to counter with the argument that seeing a 3m object 250,000 miles away is just as easy, if not easier, than seeing a planet many light years away.
And they did this optically?
Let's see if my math is wrong:
3m/400km = 7.45e-9 radians. This is what "can't" be done
x/26 light years = 7.45e-9 radians: x = 1,840,000 km. That KM, not meters.
So, if the camera can't take a picture of a 3m object on the moon [the size of the rover], it also shouldn't be able to take a picture of anything less than 1.84e9 meters in diameter 26 light years away.
What am I missing?
Dude, we don't have that for all the planets in our own Solar System.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
these aren't earth-style planets.
The reason we're able to see them is because of that fact - these are young planets. Still hot. We're photographing them in the near-infrared. Once they cool down (and become possible earth candidates) we won't be able to see them with current techniques.
But! We can see them now. Now it's a known skill, not a theoretical. From here on out it's refinement of that skill. Trying to see colder and colder planets. Getting better estimates of mass, rotation and composition. Eventually, we will be able to make those determinations and see earth like planets.
Can't wait! Very exciting stuff.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"outshone" rather than "outshined" which does not yet exist even in Wesbsterland.
After much deliberation, the newly discovered planets finally have names: orbiting the star HR 8799 are the planets Daganeth and Nonalon. In the Gemini picture, these are "b" and "c", respectively.
Orbiting Fomalhaut is the planet Graftifomal (previously named Fomalhaut b).
Its less than fifteen years ago we first found an Extra Solar Planet. But there starting to turn up regularly now. Can't be long before we find our 1st earth like planet. Maybe will build a colony ship before the end of the century.
Go ahead and write a proposal for telescope time on Keck II for an Apollo landing site observation run. You'd better have some funding from the moon conspiracy theorists in hand to pay for that expensive time, since it's not likely to lead to a paper in the ApJ.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Look it's a selfish post but:
There 3 canadians on that that astronomy team... with microscopic research budgets and they still get good science done and a once in a while.. a flashy discovery... Now that is cool....
And I was just considering ditching my engineering degree after 3 years of not using it.....
... how the galaxy itself looks like an eye? And, two gigantic chunks of rock going round a star? isn't that just a glorified comet? What is the correlation between something orbiting a star and that something being able to support life?
blog.idigitall.com
Go to the exoplanets.EU site ; follow the news links to publications about HR 8799 and also see Science for the abstract on Formalhaut (if you're working through a location which pays for access to Science, which I'm not, you should be able to get the paper from there ; there's also Supporting Online Material available, which isn't terribly informative. Now, contrary to SlashDot procedure, I'm going to shut my flap while I RTF-Papers. Shocking, isn't it?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Has someone here a clue about:
With the 30, 40 or whatever meter telescopes currently in planning or being build. Is it (or will it ever be) possible to make pictures which show atmospheric features, some real color patterns on those extrasolar planets? Like a picture from a space probe, just smaller and blurrier.
Or will it always be some blurry dot or pixelated false color stuff?
Because personally, I woud really like to see some actual image (even blurry and quite small) of an extrasolar world within my lifetime.
Nobody gets the horror of this news ! Obviously it's Cthugha, the evil deity from Fomalhaut, akin to Cthulhu ! He's coming for us ! We are doomed to be engulfed in flames in less than 4,5 Bn years !
Two french TV channels news just mentionned the "first picture of an exoplanet", giving the Hubble pic and mentionning it, and no single word of the other one! This seems highly unfair to say the least.
Very nice looking eye.
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But we can be treated equal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Fomalhaut_.28Alpha_Piscis_Austrini.29
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