Exoplanet Camera Now Online

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday January 7, 2014 @05:04AM from the where's-waldo-in-spaaaace dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes with news that the Gemini Planet Imager is officially online "The Gemini Planet Imager is a camera that is designed to take direct photos of exoplanets, alien worlds orbiting other stars. In a test run last November it spotted the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b, a dusty ring around a nearby star, and even snapped a portrait of Jupiter's moon Europa. Up to now, only about a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged; GPI is expected to find dozens more in the next few years." From the Gemini project: "'Even these early first-light images are almost a factor of 10 better than the previous generation of instruments. In one minute, we are seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect,' says Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who led the team that built the instrument." The announcement has pictures.

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Oh! Sure.... by camperdave · 2014-01-07 05:11 · Score: 3, Funny

Oh! Sure. They can take images of planets light years away, against the light pollution of the planet's sun, but somehow they don't have the resolving power to image the license plate on the lunar rover to silence the moon landing deniers.

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
1. Re:Oh! Sure.... by cusco · 2014-01-07 07:32 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Someone had convinced one of my co-irkers that the original Apollo 8 'Earthrise' image was Photoshopped (I'm **hoping** as a joke). He seemed surprised to hear that Photoshop didn't exist in 1968.
  
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  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Rude gestures from other worlds by TWiTfan · 2014-01-07 05:13 · Score: 4, Funny

One of the first pictures we snapped was of a totally unnecessary gesture from a very impolite world in the Andromeda region.

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The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Re:RECEIVING MESSAGE...JUST A MOMENT by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-07 06:10 · Score: 4, Funny

Burma Shave.

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.