Exoplanet Camera Now Online

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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.

--
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
1. Re:Oh! Sure.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-07 05:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  They would just claim that the pics of the landing sites were photoshopped so why bother entertaining their delusion?
2. Re:Oh! Sure.... by iggymanz · 2014-01-07 06:06 · Score: 1
  
  there is such a photo, taken at the site where they faked the landing. 8D
3. Re: Oh! Sure.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-07 06:32 · Score: 1
  
  A milliarcsecond is a unit for measuring very small angles, e.g. how far apart things are in the sky. This can also be a measure of the resolution of a telescope: the smallest angle of separation between two objects that show up as separated in the telescope. There are other factors at play and some details about exactly what is resolvable by a telescope, but the obvious point is that seeing the surface of the moon from Earth with 1 meter detail requires nearly a thousand times the bare minimum resolution needed to see something like the planet mentioned in the summary. Things on the scale of planet orbits comparable to the orbits of planets in our solar system, even at a distance of tens of light years, look much bigger than something about a meter in size on the surface of the moon.
4. Re:Oh! Sure.... by camperdave · 2014-01-07 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  Fine, except they're not imaging 1AU diameter planets that are a mere ten LY away. They are imaging Jupiter sized planets at 63 light years away. Using the data from wikipedia (Jupiter's radius*1.65)/ (distance to Beta Picrotis B) = X/(distance to the Moon), they should be able to resolve objects with a radius of about 5 cm. In other words, Armstrong's bootprint should be a pixel or two across.
  
  --
  When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
5. 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.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
6. Re:Oh! Sure.... by camperdave · 2014-01-07 14:47 · Score: 1
  
  Except you're not taking into account the angle of the plane of the orbit, or where in the orbit the BetaPicB was at the moment the image was captured. This means that there is a significant cosine factor missing from your calculation.
  
  Actually, you can't tell anything from the picture, because there's no scale. Is the 25 pixel blob 1.65*Jupiter? Is the solar "blackout" disk 1.8 solar radii? Is the distance from the center of the blackout disk to the center of the blob 8 AU or 1, or something else entirely? There's no way of telling.
  
  --
  When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
7. Re:Oh! Sure.... by Kyont · 2014-01-08 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  +1 for introducing the term "co-irkers" to my permanent working vocabulary! :-)
  
  --
  You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
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."
RECEIVING MESSAGE...JUST A MOMENT by CarlStanley · 2014-01-07 05:23 · Score: 1

All These Worlds Are Yours Except
Europa
Attempt No
Landing There
Use Them Together
Use Them In Peace
1. Re:RECEIVING MESSAGE...JUST A MOMENT by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-07 06:10 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Burma Shave.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Cheese by tedgyz · 2014-01-07 05:31 · Score: 1

Just tell me where the cheese is.

--
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
International project by tomhath · 2014-01-07 05:46 · Score: 1

FTFA:

GPI is an international project led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)

Good to see international cooperation on a project like this. No reason for the US to go it alone.
Re:We should be using this for near Earth objects by Urkki · 2014-01-07 06:28 · Score: 1

I doubt it would work very well. Near earth objects would be moving fast, and be at unknown location, while this is designed to look at steady known object with really long exposure time and probably very narrow field of view.
Breathtaking by argStyopa · 2014-01-07 06:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well done, GPI team.
I don't know about you, but for me this is absolutely thrilling. We're no longer inferring the existence of other planets, we're actually LOOKING at them.
The word "breathtaking" doesn't cover it.
And from a ground-based camera...I knew imaging tech is leaping ahead, but this makes me absolutely excited to see what the GPI (and eventually, hopefully, the JWST) will see over the next years.

--
-Styopa
1. Re:Breathtaking by Koyaanisqatsi · 2014-01-07 08:16 · Score: 2
  
  This is a very interesting moment in time. At this rate of development, it is quite possible that in a decade or two we'd have full spectrographic analysis of the atmospheres of a handful of words. This might not be the ones best suited to sustain life, but we might get to those as well. Can't wait!
2. Re:Breathtaking by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-01-07 08:22 · Score: 2
  
  And from a ground-based camera...
  Oh, wait, what?! And here I was remarking that the image of Europa was fantastic for an Earth-orbit telescope.
  I'll see your 'breathtaking' and raise you one 'astonishing'.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
How far we've come by wjcofkc · 2014-01-07 07:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

The first exoplanet found orbiting a main sequence star was discovered on 6 October 1995, around 51 Pegasi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi

It was only detected by gravitational wobble. Prior to that psuedo-exoplanets had been discovered but they involved non-solar system type objects such as pulsars. After the 1995 discovery, scientists slowly made more discoveries based on planetary wobble. At that time, the ability to take pictures like what we have seen in this article seemed farther flung into the future than we are now - if possible at all. But science is persistent and new technologies were developed fast. Now here we are imaging planets as they orbit their stars and the technology to image them continues to accelerate and advance at breakneck speed. If the development of scientific instruments were a race, planet finding and the LHC would at least be neck and neck if not having planet find slightly in the lead. There is preliminary work going on that promises views of extrasolar planets at resolutions as high as viewing the moons of the outer planets with our best telescopes - some say it may be possible to image planets with the resolution of looking back at the Earth from the moon. Is there no obstacle to discovery science cannot overcome? Time will tell. These new ultra-resolution planet find tools are hoped to be developed and ready by 2025, When I consider how far we have come and fast fast, I am inclined to believe we may actually get those images in that timeframe - despite how far fetched that kind of resolution may seem today.

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Re:NSA by i+kan+reed · 2014-01-07 07:14 · Score: 1

That was bad, but, come on, it was newly released software. Have you never been spared using a v0.X of anything?
Online? by mrego · 2014-01-07 07:59 · Score: 1

Oh, by online they mean plugged in. Not online as in accessible to anyone via the internet, right?
Beta Pectoris? by fredrated · 2014-01-07 08:20 · Score: 1

You mean it has muscles?
Can't wait for more pixels by InfiniteLoopCounter · 2014-01-07 09:04 · Score: 1

These pictures are 6px by 6px. With 30 or so pixels squared you can start to really make out stuff. Compare to our recent Juno probe's view of the Earth Moon system as it passed us on it's way to Jupiter (it will go past us twice).
1. Re:Can't wait for more pixels by InfiniteLoopCounter · 2014-01-07 09:44 · Score: 1
  
  The pixels are smaller than the actual resolution of the telescope, and the point spread function is just smearing the light from the entire planet over several pixels. You would need pixels and resolution several thousand time smaller to see distinct details from the planet, which would require a telescope much larger due to diffraction limits.
  Yes, I know. What we could do with is a space based telesope array better than the James Webb, which is yet to be launched. This would remove some of the problems with single lens size limits and light interference if we put it in a good observation spot.
Re:NSA by InfiniteLoopCounter · 2014-01-07 09:13 · Score: 1

It's funny, but the NSA actually has the best telescopes and has donated some of their old ones to NASA.