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First Four Exoplanets of 2012 Discovered
astroengine writes "Only four days into the New Year and the first four exoplanets of 2012 have been spotted orbiting four distant stars. All four alien worlds are known as 'hot Jupiters' — large gas giant planets orbiting very close to their stars. Their orbits are aligned just right with the Earth so that when they pass in front of their parent stars, they slightly dim the starlight from view. The discovery was made by the The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) Project (maintained by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) consisting of six small (11cm diameter), wide-field automated telescopes based at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO), Cambridge, Mass. and The Submillimeter Array atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii."
Anyone know what the real estate market is like there? I mean, after we build our spider-silk space elevator and have daily Shuttle service to the Moon (in three years or so according to the free market invisible hand), I'd like to retire in a bungalow on a Hot Jupiter and have tea with Elon Musk.
Sounds like an indie chick band.
I know "Best of whatever of this year" come often too early, but this is just silly.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not to nitpick (and because I'm curious), have these just been announced, or have they actually been discovered in 2012? It's not entirely clear from TFA.
Man, this stuff used to be practically sci-fi, now it seems to happen all the time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The Drake Equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation way back when made me accept that the probability of life elsewhere in the universe was high. These exo-planet discoveries are not all that surprising to me. Furthermore the existence of these planets is inferred. It's not like the HST captured some cool pictures of them. In fact, it's unlikely anyone in the near future (for whatever defn of "near future" you care to use) will ever see these planets with their own 2 eyes, or travel to any of them.
In short, they're boring.
Another nit, FLWO is on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, not in Cambridge, MA. They wouldn't find the damn full moon if they were in Cambridge. http://www.sao.arizona.edu/FLWO/whipple.html
Maybe not entirely off-topic, since this story is from the "mayans-predicted-them-of-course dept." but someone sent me some "Real Mayan 2012" hooey, which said (among the unfalsifiable new-age woo) this possibly falsifiable, possibly astronomical statement:
I'd like to debunk this shinola the only way that's conclusive (to me): rejecting the science. I couldn't even find a definition of "the solar meridian", though Google points to pages using it to mean a line from wherever the Sun is in the sky to the observer's zenith, and some other meanings related to a definition of the Greenwich Prime Meridian for defining standard time, and some uses meaning a semicircumpolar North-South line on the Sun itself, none of which seem to apply. So:
1. What is the solar median?
2. Can it cross the galactic equator (as seen from Earth)? Will it on 12/21/2012?
3. When the Sun rises anywhere (as seen from somewhere on Earth) on 12/21/12, will it rise close to the intersection of the galactic equator and the (Earth's) plane of the ecliptic?
4. Will 1 and 2 happen at the same time?
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make install -not war
I want to know what happens to the final five.
To this layman the current system seems to rely on faster moving large planets. Most if not all recent discoveries are plants that orbit on the order of days. It's not likely we will find larger planets like those in our system with this method. Saturn takes something like 22 years to orbit the sun. You won't see many transits of longer orbit exoplanets in the typical astronomers career.
It all starts at 0
To this layman the current system seems to rely on faster moving large planets.
I am a layman as well, but this system (as well as others) measures the brightness or magnitude of target star(s) over time to detect exoplanets. I would believe one of the methods of verification is to watch for repeatable dips in the magnitude. Otherwise it may just have been a cloud. With infinite targets, limited equipment, and limited time, it makes sense that the faster orbiting larger planets are found first. One, with a fast orbital period, you wouldn't have to wait years for a confirmation, plus larger planets, at least IMHO, would dim their parent star more, making for easier, more reliable detection. What amazes me it that the scopes themselves are just 11m aperture. That is a very small scope, I did not know you could do this kind of survey with that little light gathering power.
Silence is a state of mime.
they slightly dim the starlight from view
But how they know this dim is produced by a planet? You can look at our Sun and its light has different intensity depending on the cycle it's on. I mean, how do they really know it's an exo-planet and not burst of plasma that finished?
Is it true that they do not actually see planets that they measure a stars brightness and when it goes dim ever so slightly they claim it is a planet. Could it be that Sun spots cause the dim and not a orbiting planet. Some of the claims of Jupiter size planets in orbits closer than mercury make me skeptical that they are actually planets and not sun spots or some other force other than planets. I do believe that some of them are planets but do not believe the science takes everything into account.
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