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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
I want to know what happens to the final five.
The Galactic Equator would have to be razor thin to cross over in just 1 day. If there is some mysterious field at the Galactic Equator, we should be able to see it's interaction with our solar system before it hits us.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Any equator, meridian or other line is infinitely thin.
I don't know about any mysterious field there. But Mayans were indeed excellent astronomers and calendarmakers. The ecliptic plane does intersect the galactic equator, and the Mayans reportedly marked those lines and that point, fairly prominently in their astronomy. Many ancient cultures, including all over the Eastern Hemisphere, marked days as special when the Sun rose or set at some point aligned with some other sky object, often marked with a calendarical artifact. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Maya noted the day that the Sun rose at that point along the horizon, even if that day were in the distant past (and/or future; these are cycles, as the Mayans knew).
So is that day 12/21/2012? Or is this latest hooey 100% hooey?
--
make install -not war
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon#Origins As I understand it, the earth and sun line up with the center of the galaxy every year, and 2012 will be the first time in 25,800 years that this will happen on the winter solstice. This happens to coincide with the end of a 144,000 day cycle in the Mayan calendar.
Either the Mayans are trying to predict some future event with their calendar, in which case they could have only recieved this knowledge from alien beings, or their calendar is just that - a calendar and nothing more.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
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.