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First Four-Exoplanet System Imaged

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the space-is-really-big dept.

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."

3 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Quite strange. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    When Galileo invented the telescope, pointed it to the sky and mapped more stars than anyone before him (or since, he still holds the record for the number of stars cataloged) most people objected saying, "well this tube seems to be showing many interesting things. But what is the guarantee it is showing the real thing? What if it is producing illusions?". Even when pointed to terrestrial objects and showed that it is always showing the real thing, there were doubts. His lenses had terrible spherical aberration and chromatic aberration and had very heavy rainbow fringes on bright objects and things were shown upside down. One could almost forgive the bishops and the cardinals distrusting the instrument, and saying they will believe only things that they can see with their eye.

    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
  2. Let's not ignore the oceans by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  3. Re:Once the tech process gets better... by macson_g · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let me remind you of the old anti-space colonization argument: The Gobi desert HAS a breathable atmosphere and I don't see people living there.