Hubble Announces A Major Extrasolar Planet Discovery

[TropicalLife]

Hey,

 

Just read this -

 

Hubble Announces A Major Extrasolar Planet Discovery

November 7th, 2008

 

WASHINGTON, (NASA) — NASA will hold a Science Update to report on a significant discovery about planets orbiting other stars at 2:30 p.m. EST, Thursday, Nov. 13, in NASA’s James E. Webb auditorium. This unique discovery, made by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advance Camera for Surveys instrument, also will be featured in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science.

 

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I've been following the Planet Quest site for over a year now - we're up to 322 exoplanets and it'll likely go up by the time some people read this. I'm curious as to what they've discovered! Its not "the usual amazing photo" that Hubble has provided us for years now, hope its interesting as it sounds.

 

[Arch2008]

I don’t know if this was the discovery, but the German magazine Bild has a story that a team of astronomers have actually taken IR pictures of an exoplanet system around HR 8799, about 130 light years away. There are three planets, all larger than Jupiter, visible as three specks in the pictures. In addition, a team from the University of California has Hubble pictures in visible light of a triple Jupiter mass exoplanet orbiting Formalhaut, which is 25 ly away. Both discoveries are firsts for the exoplanet hunt.

 

Here's a link to a story in Astronomy about this:

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7599

 

and in Science Express:

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/

 

Actual pictures of an exoplanet! Bravo!

Edited November 14, 2008 by Arch2008

[TropicalLife]

Hey,

 

Yep, that's it! I had a feeling it was exo-planet related. Well, we scooped it here on Science Forums. When NASA waits a week to announce something, there's a reason.

 

 

And what a cool discovery!!

 

I don’t know if this was the discovery, but the German magazine Bild has a story that a team of astronomers have actually taken IR pictures of an exoplanet system around HR 8799, about 130 light years away. There are three planets, all larger than Jupiter, visible as three specks in the pictures. In addition, a team from the University of California has Hubble pictures in visible light of a triple Jupiter mass exoplanet orbiting Formalhaut, which is 25 ly away. Both discoveries are firsts for the exoplanet hunt.

 

Here's a link to a story in Astronomy about this:

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7599

 

and in Science Express:

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/

 

Actual pictures of an exoplanet! Bravo!

[Arch2008]

Yes it is amazing considering that we are going to let Hubble burn up upon re-entry. With the 100 meter telescope and the use of interferometry with other large telescopes we may one day be able to image the surfaces of exoplanets (and perhaps the distant glow of city lights).

 

Here's a short clip from Yahoo with Kalas explaining his discovery:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_new_planets

Edited November 14, 2008 by Arch2008

[iNow]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081114.html

 

 

 

Fomalhaut b

Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (Univ. California, Berkeley),

M. Clampin (NASA/Goddard), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore NL),

K. Stapelfeldt, J. Krist (NASA/JPL)

 

Explanation: Fomalhaut (sounds like "foam-a-lot") is a bright, young, star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. In this sharp composite from the Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut's surrounding ring of dusty debris is imaged in detail, with overwhelming glare from the star masked by an occulting disk in the camera's coronagraph. Astronomers now identify, the tiny point of light in the small box at the right as a planet about 3 times the mass of Jupiter orbiting 10.7 billion miles from the star (almost 14 times the Sun-Jupiter distance). Designated Fomalhaut b, the massive planet probably shapes and maintains the ring's relatively sharp inner edge, while the ring itself is likely a larger, younger analog of our own Kuiper Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of icy bodies. The Hubble data represent the first visible-light image of a planet circling another star.

 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081114.html

[Arch2008]

Here's a link to the IR image of HR 8799 b,c and d.

http://oklo.org/