Martin Posted September 11, 2004 Posted September 11, 2004 Astronomers working in Chile think they may have taken the first direct image of a planet circling another star. The star, called 2M1207, is 230 light-years away and is very much smaller and fainter than our own Sun. The pictured companion is 100 times fainter still and tested the technical limits of the Yepun telescope. Astronomer Christophe Dumas said: "It is a strange feeling that it may indeed be the first planetary system beyond our own ever imaged....The thrill of seeing this faint source of light in real-time on the instrument display was unbelievable." Benjamin Zuckerman, of the University of California, in Los Angeles, added: "If the candidate companion of 2M1207 is really a planet, this would be the first time that a gravitationally bound exoplanet has been imaged around a star or brown dwarf." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3644410.stm
Martin Posted September 12, 2004 Author Posted September 12, 2004 this ESO press release is even more informative http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-23-04.html it quotes Anne-Marie Lagrange near the end, giving a bit of perspective on where it's going some coincidental information on another ESO thing http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210426 Closest Star Seen Orbiting the Supermassive Black Hole at the Centre of the Milky Way this 2002 paper is of observing a star orbit around the BH at Milky center (coming within 17 light-hours of the hole, taking 15 years to complete one orbit, thus revealing the mass of the hole to be around 3 million solar masses) these people and/or their instrument at ESO in chile seem very good. Anne-Marie Lagrange was involved in both the recently-reported imaging of the exoplanet and tracking the tight orbit around the black hole. in both cases I think that IR imaging (like at 2 microns) with adaptive optics was critical BTW even though these people say they have a first there may have been earlier results like this, where something was imaged which might be a gas-giant exoplanet. I dont know for sure that it is a first. But in any case the image quality is admirable.
ydoaPs Posted October 10, 2004 Posted October 10, 2004 the planet showed signs of water. it is supposed to be still contracting. it is 10 times the size of jupiter and orbits the same distance as neptune is from the sun. too bad it isnt confirmed yet.
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