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Ultra-Sensitive Camera To Measure Exoplanet Sizes
Roland Piquepaille writes "US astronomers and engineers have built a new camera to precisely measure the size of planets moving around distant stars. This camera has been dubbed OPTIC — short for 'Orthogonal Parallel Transfer Imaging Camera.' According to the research team, it is 'so sensitive that it could detect the passage of a moth in front of a lit window from a distance of 1,000 miles.' I'm not sure if this analogy is right, but the team said it was able to precisely define the size of a planet called WASP-10b which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth."
"For the first time, scientists are approaching the precision needed to measure transits of Earth-size planets."
Wow!
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth.
yeah, not very useful, since it might take like 10,000 years to get there
which is over 9,000
O.o
[notability]
[citation not needed]
Cool. Now we just have to worry if the CIA thinks they've found WMDs there.
Can it precisely define the size of Uranus?
Re those "splitinfinitive" taggers: Split infinitives are perfectly legal in English.
Yes, in American English as well.
And if they are used to change the emphasis in a phrase, they often are very useful too. They can even allow for improved clarity.
So just stop to stupidly impose latin grammar rules and conventions on another language.
By the way: Ending sentences with prepositions is generally OK as well.
Almost got me, there, Roland.
Astronomy.com Linky.
It measures light to a precision of one part in 2,000
So that's 11 bits of intensity information? Most professional camera CCD's are 12 bits per color. Some are 14 bits per color. Doesn't sound very impressive. And with multiple exposures, it should be possible to get a much higher resolution.
The photometric precision is three to four times higher than that of typical CCDs and two to three times higher than the best CCDs, and comparable to the most recent results from the Hubble Space Telescope for stars of the same brightness.
Hmmm, still doesn't sound too impressive. What do they mean by 'typical CCD' anyway?
In any case, it's not more sensitive than the Hubble apparently, so it's probably not going to make any breakthrough discoveries.
Nice, but not news.
assignment != equality != identity
Hasn't everything been said yet?
... but is it accurate?
I mean, what sort of error bars are we talkin' here?
I picture some astronomer saying something like
"We believe it is 10,045.2381 km diameter, uh wait, no, 2,785.9273 km, uh wait..."
Everyone knows a camera adds at least 10 pounds to the subject.
Have gnu, will travel.
Pics or it didn't happen.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Can this camera detect undetectable terrorists in iraq?
I'd like to know how they can verify their claims that they have accurately measured something if it's 300 light years away.It's not like they can dash over and check, is it?
Even the moth at 1000 miles would be hard to susbstantiate.
the team said it was able to precisely define the size of a planet called WASP-10b which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth.
Next up for the team? Precisely measure planets around stars SPIC-20, CHINK-15, and GRINGO-117.
So since it can detect a moth in front of a lit window a 1000 miles away, what happens when a moth flies directly in front of the camera?
(300 light years / 1000 miles) * 2 inches == 89 588 337.2 kilometers
So (assuming an average moth is about 2 inches in size) it could make out a planet of about 90 million km (some 64 times wider than Sol) in diameter in front of a star that's 300 light years away, right?
OPTIC is not exactly a new camera, nor was it purpose-built for this. It's about four years old, and was the prototype camera for John Tonry's OTCCD (Orthogonal Transfer CCD) chips, which are now better known as the chips inside Pan-STARRS' gigapixel camera, I think. The OTCCDs have some in-chip guiding capabilities, which are kinda neat. If I recall, OPTIC spends half the year at (but not always on) the UH 2.2-meter (where I'm an operator) and half the year at WIYN.
Because OPTIC works somewhat differently than our other cameras, it doesn't exactly have a whole lot of users. John Johnson came up with the idea of using it to do light curves of transiting planets, and it turned out to work pretty well, to the point that he and his collaborators (including a couple summer REU students from the mainland) were able to get the first full-transit light curves of some particular planets.
(*involved as in, I was operating the scope that night in August and got to see those light curves in "real time." Fortunately, being thanked at the end of a scientific paper preprint earns me geek cred with my 9-year-old. ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
...is 11 bits of precision, approximately. Somehow I'm underwhelmed.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.