Slashdot Mirror
First Four-Exoplanet System Imaged
Phoghat writes "Among the first exoplanet systems imaged was HR 8799. In 2008, a team led by Christian Marois at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada took a picture of the system, directly imaging three giant planets."
Once the tech process gets better, we can find more Earthlike planets instead of just these big ones. Still, encouraging.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
For those who were not able to get in before the Slashdotting, here is a picture in text
. .
O
o
.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
anyone got a mirror? site is already timing out for me.
Fast forward 400 years, images captured on a charge coupled device producing pixels from light gathered by giant telescopes is considered "direct imaging" and is somehow more reliable and more worthy of our trust than the Doppler shifts, wobbles and loss of brightness due to osculation!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The oceans are about 5% explored. More resources should be geared toward the oceans as well.
You never know...we might find some creature under there that has some complex protein mankind could use to treat chronic diseases like diabetes, AIDS and the like.
How'z that?
First Four Exoplanet System are Image
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I hope this doesn't cause a slashdotting of the Herzberg Institute, but...
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/news/nrc/2010/12/08/exoplanet-marois.html
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
The site's dead Jim.
Once the tech process gets better
Read: home musicians can get better quality sound out of cheaper equipment
we can find more Earthlike planets instead of just these big ones.
Read: music that's closer to actual music, rather than stereotypical "music" (or, in the case of exoplanets, gas giants.)
Still, encouraging
Indeed!
Living With a Nerd
The subject is system. System is singular, "system is" correct.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
While this is better than the blobby pixels we usually get for such remote planetary bodies, I don't consider this an "image" appreciable to the lay person. It just shows fuzzy dots around a larger fuzzy region and to this lay person at least does not conclusively show that these "objects" are indeed exo-planets. Who's to say they aren't some other, wholly unrelated celestial body? And what information does this sort of "image" convey even to professional astronomers?
If a horde of scientists can argue for months about whether or not Pluto is really a planet then rule that it is not, why can't this same group rule on what constitutes an "image". Perhaps different classifications of images needs to be established, ranging from "Blobby Pixels" to "HD Photograph". You might argue that this is ridiculous, but I think it would be a good thing to set such standards since it would serve to measure our telescopic and imaging technology and allow us to benchmark our abilities to image across vast distances. With such measurements, we could then possibly derive a comparative rate of advancement to predict when we might be able to image further into the universe which in turn might help us plan objectives further out into the future.
shouldn't the planets have moved? I though most of the newly discovered planets had crazy fast orbits.
Even the inner planets don't appear to have moved. I would expect these pictures to look more like the
moons of Jupiter. Never in the same spot in two different photos.
...it's full of planets!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Thet's what I thought when I first read your post. What really ticks me off is when otherwise comprtent writers (Alistair Reynolds, I'm looking at you...) use the word "occlude" to describe an object passing in front of (or behind) another object. Occult means "pass behind" or hidden from view"*, occlude means "stopped up"
*a much better definition of "occult powers" than the definition "supernatural".
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
He might just be an evolutionist using a metaphor. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Seems like it would help the likes of SETI even without those details; we could aim/to from plausible planets rather than aiming randomly through the universe. And we could narrow our aim with more information even if we don't have full information.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
They are further from the glare of the home star, which can be partially masked. Another exoplanet imaging result found a planet at about the distance of Neptune. The long-delayed Webb telescope should be great for this kind of searches.
I'm not sure it helps yet. Have we found stars for which we are sure there are no planets around ? The current observations give a lower bound on the probability that a random star has a planet, but no higher bound. If every star has a planetary system, I don't see how it will help...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I'm just eyeballing the pictures, but, they don't appear to move.
This isn't surprising for the outer dots, which are 20-60 times farther from the star than Earth is from the sun, but the innermost one doesn't seem to move either. Not even a little.
There should be some rearrangement in the 4 months between the photos.
Where is it?
I can just imagine a crowd of sentient beings all peering hopefully at an image much like the one in TFA, showing a star and four planets much like our own, wondering the same thing I am...
"So, when are we going?"
"First Four-Exoplanet System Imaged"? Actually, every other system in the universe is at least an eight-exoplanet system, inasmuch as it has at least eight exoplanets (Mercury, Venus, Earth et al).
I doubt we have that, how difficult it is to detect a planet not only depends on the size but very much on the orbit. But you don't need to exclude anything, just to do better than random sweeps. Even if it turns out planetary systems are very common, we can pick the most earth-like planets in the most earth-like orbits around the most sun-like stars with jupiter-like asteroid cleaners and moon-like satellites and point our antennas there. If we can do things like spectral analysis, detect magnetic fields and so on let's throw that in the mix too. Of course life might be completely different, but until we've got something better to go on we should try searching for life that resembles that on earth. Just geting a partial list of candidates to rank would be a great step up from current efforts.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I can't help but think that many of astronomic "discoveries" these days is hokum. It's either that or the overblown headlines.
Tell me straight:
1) Is ANY EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE found? (the simplest of bacteria/viruses are ok, proteins that make life forms aren't)
2) Is there any evidence of WATER ANYWHERE else but here? (answers "there could be ice" & "look at the Mars' ridges" are not acceptable, sorry)
3) Is there a planet LIKE EARTH of whose existence we are certain? (anything goes here really)