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Three New Exoplanets Seen In Direct Photographs
The Bad Astronomer writes "Planets orbiting other stars are usually found indirectly (by blocking their stars' light or inducing a Doppler shift in the light as they orbit, for example), but direct images of exoplanets are extremely rare. However, using the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have taken photographs of three nearby exoplanets, all young, massive, and hot. One may be massive enough to count as a brown dwarf, but the other two are more likely in the planet-mass range. All three are very far from their stars, which means they may have formed differently than the planets in our solar system."
The OP was talking about planets, right?
I see the NSA is not content with spying on Earthlings...
These planets are directly observable with current technology. Within 10 years, one would imagine that smaller, nearer-to-the-star planets will be directly viewed...perhaps even spectroscopy on the planet's atmosphere will be possible. The James Webb telescope might be able to do some of this as soon as 2017.
That said, will we see strong evidence for life on another world soon? My guess is that an atmosphere with gases that simply don't belong there in large quantities (dimethyl sulfide, free oxygen, etc.) will be found sooner rather than later...and that will more or less wrap it up.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
FW Tau is perhaps the most interesting of the three systems. The star is actually a binary, two stars orbiting each other. Both stars are cool red dwarfs, about a quarter of the mass of the Sun each, orbiting about 1.6 billion kilometers (one billion miles) apart, roughly the distance of Saturn to the Sun. The stars are a bit less than two million years old, and are 470 light years from Earth.
Two Million? Really?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
As awesome as this is, I'd love to see a time-lapse series of an exoplanet orbiting its star. I think that'd really drive home what we're looking at.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
For those wondering what this is.
Liberty in your lifetime
Is the shape of these dots representing merely the telescope's own artifacts? Will we be able to see clouds/continents of the largest exoplanets, if Phil Plait's prediction, that seeing Earth--sized planets is only a few years away, turns out to be true?
Look down.
yet entirely consistent with the electric universe theory.
Isn't the "electric universe" one of those things, which is consistent with anything? Impossible to falsify and therefore absolute truth?