Slashdot Mirror
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".
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.
Oh look, fixed
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
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.
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.
"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"?
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.
To "Discovery" something is easy: you just make a documentary about it that's too dumbed-down for people who like documentaries but still too boring for those who don't, and add lots of unnecessary and repetitive CG animation.
Blank until
Nice pictures. That looks like an excellent spot for a hyperspace express bypass.
Bonus point for hiring that guy that does voice-overs for action movie and thriller trailers.
"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.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but he died recently. Sadly this means Hollywood will only be releasing romantic comedies and musicals from now on.
In other news, Gillette's share price has skyrocketed...
Blank until
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.
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.
The moon is too bright.
Try it at night, when it's not lit.
It's still too bright.
Use less sensitive optics.
Good idea!
And to make it interesting to slashdot:
To photograph the Moon landing sites in high detail, with cheap home made equipment, the bunch of moon-landing-deniers could each buy a small telescope, coordinate them across the net in real time, and use adaptive optics techniques to combine and sharpen the images, the same way the Keck team photographed those exo-planets.
I think, with a million home telescopes linked up, all pointed at the landing sites, with adaptive optics, they could count the stars on the flags (at least).
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.
[sigh] Mod points, and not an Idiot category in sight...
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
... 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"
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 !
The fact remains that after I posted the comment the typo was fixed, troll mod or not.
Very nice looking eye.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Fomalhaut_.28Alpha_Piscis_Austrini.29
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Irregular verbs are binded to slowly disappear, that's how it haved always beed.
You just got troll'd!
Crap, I mean "that be how". Seriously though, it's a trend that dates back to the middle ages or something.
You just got troll'd!
If you don't get the joke in parent's sig, google the phrase. There's more goodness in that sig, too.
Lose essential liberties to get temporary safety = get only hassles and security theater.