Exoplanet Found In Old Hubble Image

Kristina at Science News writes "A new way to process images reveals an extrasolar planet that had been hiding in an 11-year-old Hubble picture. After ground-based telescopes found three planets orbiting the young star HR 8799, a team took that information and reprocessed some 11-year-old Hubble Space Telescope images. Voila. There was one of the three planets, captured by Hubble but not visible until new knowledge could see the picture in a fresh light. The technique could reveal hidden treasures in many archived telescope images." For reference, the first exoplanet to be (knowingly) directly imaged was 2M1207_b in late 2004.

Comments

Theoretical Quantum Physics

[silentsentinel]

What's the best way to get into the field? Hah. Open ended question I know, but I've recently felt this stuff is a field I could work in that I might... actually enjoy.

The problem is, I don't want to go in the wrong direction and take a bunch of junk courses that have no pertinence to my end goal, or take a bunch of stuff that someone will later tell me doesn't count toward a proper degree.

I'm 25, almost 26. I never got a degree in Comp Sci because I knew, deep down, that I wouldn't find enjoyment in any of the dominant arenas of computer work (even tho I'm well versed in them, and everyone always said "go get your computer science degree!") I just felt wasting the money wasn't worth it, while everyone else saw no err in throwing money at something they weren't sure about. (Of the 6 or 7 people I know that got degrees in Comp Sci, the only one actually enjoying the field is one guy who didn't go to school for it at all. The rest are doing nothing relating to computers, and most feel they wasted their time [and $].)

Well now I have an idea of what I actually want to do, but I don't know what route to take.

Would one generally just get their Associates Degree first and go from there, or is there a better, more tailored route one could take?

Thanks for any input from the Slashdot crowd.