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Lowest Mass Exoplanet Ever Directly Imaged. Probably.
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers announced today that they have taken a direct image of the lowest mass exoplanet ever seen. HD 95086 b has a mass about 4 to 5 times that of Jupiter, and orbits a star 300 light years away that is slightly more massive and hotter than the Sun. The planet is not 100% confirmed, but it appears very likely to be real. If so, it's a hot gas giant, still cooling from its formation less than 20 million years ago. The picture, taken in the infrared, clearly shows the planet, making it one of fewer than a dozen such planets seen in actual telescopic images."
To me the sad part is unless we can find some way around that pesky relativity thing this is probably as close as we are ever gonna get to it. If you look at a pic showing our position in the milky way we really are in the ass end of town with all the really cool stuff so far away from us it would take a trip longer than humans have existed just to go to the center.
maybe its just me but as someone who grew up watching Star Trek and Lost In Space every time they find a new planet i remember that we'll never ever get to see it in person and it just bums me out.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
She can be directly imaged from 300 light years away.
I'm not an expert, so ignore me if one shows up; but my suspicion would be that they cool down enough that we can't see them anymore: You'd get a lot of heat, initially, when the planet coalesces; but if it isn't massive enough to ignite fusion and become a star, it'll just keep bleeding radiation into space until it reaches whatever equilibrium temperature the intensity and location of its local star provide for. As they get colder, their output gets weaker, until it gets to the point where our instruments are insufficiently sensitive to distinguish it from the background(unless it passes in front of its star, which has allowed us to indirectly infer the existence of smaller objects that we can't see directly).
Twenty years ago, I though that there were relatively few exoplanets - only perhaps one in every few hundred systems having them - and even if there were one nearby, the chances of detecting it, ever, were small. Now we are knee deep in exoplanets, we know that large numbers of stars can have them, and we can even see them (probably). What I thought would never happen is fast transitioning from surprising to mundane.
Which just goes to prove the to Clarke's law, that almost nothing is impossible, in due course. Once we couldn't see them. Now we can see them, but fear we will never visit them. But history shows that visiting will come, in time - provided we have enough time.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
No need to be sad. Increasing effective aperture size of the telescope increases its resolving power. The imaging element doesn't have to be a single mirror or lens, but can consist of an array of elements scattered over a large area. Tricky part is getting all of the elements in phase agreement. Also doesn't have to be visible light. We are already 'imaging' surfaces of planets with synthetic aperture radar, operating on the same principle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Telescope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array
So imagine a much larger optical array network, many miles in diameter, for imaging the surfaces of these exoplanets.