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First Exoplanet To Be Seen In Color Is Blue
ananyo writes "A navy-blue world orbiting a faraway star is the first exoplanet to have its colour measured. Discovered in 2005, HD 189733 b is one of the best-studied planets outside the Solar System, orbiting a star about 19 parsecs away in the Vulpecula, or Fox, constellation. Previous efforts to observe the planet focused on the infrared light it emits — invisible to the human eye. Astronomers have now used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the planet and its host star. Hubble's optical resolution is not high enough to actually 'see' the planet as a dot of light separate from its star, so instead, the telescope receives light from both objects that mix into a single point source. To isolate the light contribution of the planet, the researchers waited for the planet to move behind the star during its orbit, so that its light would be blocked, and looked for changes in light colour. During the eclipse, the amount of observed blue light decreased, whereas other colours remained unaffected. This indicated that the light reflected by the planet's atmosphere, blocked by the star in the eclipse, is blue."
Let's call this place "Eiffel 65".
I am officially gone from
I'm curious: what are the likely elements and molecules that would cause the blue reflection?
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Neptune is blue too....
Probably explains something about Vulpix.
Did they find the Androsynth living there?
or it indicates the planet is hurtling toward us and will strike the earth in less than 40 years.
We need to start building arks NOW.
We need to start building arks regardless.
So this planet might have a breathable atmosphere. But odds are it's more methane-based.
Still, pretty nice we can observe a planet's color.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Can we just Finally Fucking Admit that life is teeming in the universe and that information like this is a slap in the face to humanity's intelligence? WOW really? A planet that might host life is blue? You don't say? Makes no sense at all!
Seriously. There needs to be a serious and responsible disclosure by the governments/people who control the governments that there's many exoplanets, teeming with all kinds of life, and that we are not little children, but in fact empowered by this information and that as a race we should evolve our mind-frames to what is possible within our race with this new hyper-dimensional physics that is being held in top secret black projects.
But the controllers need to control, and religion is very very big business. Why not hold on to that as long as possible, humanity be damned? That's their mentality.
Some serious shit is wrong within science, the reality of humanity, and this game needs to end soon before we are all kept in the dark forever.
So, they are observing the change in light when the planet moves farther away (behind its star) and seeing less blue, thereby conjecturing the planet is blue. But wouldn't the planet's light also redshift as it moves away and blueshift as it moves toward us? How much of the color change is accounted for by doppler?
I mean, look at all this time and effort we're wasting on "science" and "discovery."
We need to get back to 16th century thinking and government funded services so my taxes can go down another $10 a paycheck. I mean, those cigarettes and premium cable TV channels aren't going to pay for themselves!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The planet has a surface temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius. It is scourged by 7000 km/h winds. Pieces of silica, or if you prefer: glass, are flying around at supersonic speeds. And yes, it is the silica and the glass that give the planet its blue color. We should not call it Eiffel65. We should call it Philip.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I am not an astronomer; any chance that the coloration could be affected by something in between? For example these so called "wrinkles" that Voyager is experiencing as it exits the solar system? Just curious.
Since parsec is an antiquated unit, this planet is about 62 light years away. (or, more usefully: 2.914 quadrillion furlongs)
Wow. I actually got to be pedantic about units and none of the units involved were metric!
19 Parsecs away, you say? Han could make it in less than 12.
In other words, it's about 1.6 Kessel Runs? But how fast is that?
John
Where are the pictures? (even if one pixel wide)
They can't see the planet, but they know when it's behind it's sun. It's 61 light years away. Umm, like is there water on the moon, or not?
TLDR: They found out that the planet is blue, by using MS paint colour picker on their instagram picture of the planet.
Several times in TFS, it says that the planet is "eclipsed" by the star. This, of course, is nonsense: the correct term is "occluded," and the event is called an occultation.
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The planet isn't blue. The blue light that got blocked out by the host star was actually the trillions of blue LEDs that the natives use to light their cities, just because they happen to really fancy blue.
Because that's how welcoming the atmosphere is.
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Vulpecula - Little Vixen, it differs slightly in connotation from the article's translation of Fox.
He effected a bored affect.
You are not a *happy camper*.
orbiting a star about 19 parsecs away
Where is the helpful posts converting this to a more useful measurement, like "libraries of congress" or "golf balls"?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Fuck that shit! It's light years around here buddy!
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...planets were planets and there was no "exo" about it?