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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."
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
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?"
It would be "That's no planet..."
I wish I could mod myself (-1: Pedantic)
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
You have to see the orbital progression to get over the thought that it's just another speck of light noise. Here is a larger image showing the position of the planet from 2004 and 2006. Also, here is the url for the release showing the image of HR 8799 with its 3 planets.
If the "noise" obeys Kepler's laws, it's probably an image of something real.
Taking pictures of them *is* news. In fact, that's the point of these releases. These are the first direct images ever released. Before this, all evidence was indirect (oscillating plots of star brightness as the planet periodically eclipsed the host star, for instance).
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"?
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.
That's no mod choice!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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
These are the first direct images ever released. Before this, all evidence was indirect (oscillating plots of star brightness as the planet periodically eclipsed the host star, for instance).
Well, except for HD 189733b, 2M1207 b and GQ Lup b.
HD189733b: not directly imaged, but has had a temperature map of it reconstructed from very careful analysis of the change in the light from the parent star as the planet transits in front of and behind it.
2M1207b: this orbits a brown dwarf, not a star.
GQ Lup b: not a planet by any reasonable stretch of the scientific imagination, unless you happen to have been a co-author of the original paper. Believe me: this one is dead, Jim, and was known by most of us to be so on arrival.
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.
It's unlikely there's any civilizations on ANY exoplanets we've discovered, since they're all gas giants. Civilizations like ours are only likely on small, rocky, warm planets, which are currently undetectable to us as they're too small, and too close to their stars.
Of course, Fomalhault "b" is only a temporary designation; if smaller planets are detected closer to the star, then one of those would become "b" I imagine. But even so, it still isn't likely there'd be a civilization on one of those, since this star is so young, and so would any planets orbiting it. If the age of this star is correct, it didn't even exist when our world had dinosaurs on it, which wasn't really that long ago considering the age of our planet.
As for moons, however, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Fomalhault's gas giant planets had some moons. Our own gas giants have tons of moons, many of them just tiny asteroids really. Surely at least a few stray asteroids have been captured by these gas giants over the past 60 million years.
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