Dunkirk101
02-16-2005, 02:08 AM
Man this was so cool. I doubt if we will ever be able to send any probes there, but to me, it was a good find nonetheless!
Way-Out World: New Technique Finds Most Distant Planet Ever
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 03:30 pm ET
06 January 2003
SEATTLE - The most distant known planet, a large and hot world pelted by iron rain and orbiting a star about 5,000 light-years away, has been found with a new and promising search technique.
The discovery extends astronomers capabilities for planet hunting beyond the roughly 160 light-years of nearby space in which other planets had been found. The number of stars that can now be examined jumps from 40,000 to 100 million or more, said the scientists involved in the discovery.
The planet is about the size of Jupiter and orbits its host star every 29 hours, closer than Mercury is to our Sun. It was discovered because it crosses in front of the star, as seen from Earth. Astronomers measured a slight dip in starlight as the planet transits the star.
The effect is akin to watching a mosquito flying in front of a searchlight two hundred miles away, the researchers said.
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/hf_planet_transit_030106_01.jpg
An artist's impression of the newfound planet, which is roughly the size of Jupiter and orbits very close to its host star.
While only a small percentage of planets can be conveniently configured this way, this transit method shows great promise for finding more of them, experts say. Previously, all firm planet detections were made by the so-called wobble method, in which astronomers note slight wobbles in stars induced by the gravitational tug of an orbiting world.
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
A transiting-planet discovery had been pursued for several months by about 20 research groups and was not unexpected, though its occurrence is marks a milestone in the search for other worlds.
"We stand on the threshold of a new era of exploration and discovery," said Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov. "We have found a better way to detect new worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy that paves the way for future planetary discoveries."
More to come
Other astronomers were excited, too.
"The transit method will yield many detections in coming years," said Debra Fischer, a University of California, Berkeley astronomer and a member of the most successful planet hunting team on Earth. Fischer's crew, led by Geoffrey Marcy at Berkeley and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, detects planets by the wobble method.
In an interview last week, Fischer, who had seen the new results, said the two techniques should prove complementary.
Fischer's wobble method, also known as the Doppler technique, works only for stars within about 160 light-years, she explained. It also requires huge telescopes and lengthy observations -- equal to the time it takes a planet to make a complete orbit. The transit method, which can use moderate-sized telescopes, is limited to crowded star fields, where the enormous number of stars offer a good chance for a detection even though the odds are low for each star.
The transit method's most important advantage is that it yields far more information about the planets it finds. In fact, it was used in 2001 to re-examine a transiting planet that had been first discovered by the wobble method. The transit observations provided the first measurements ever made of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.
Ultimately, however, nearer planets can be more thoroughly examined by space-based observatories planned for launch over the next decade, providing ample reason for other research groups to continue the sorts of searches done by Fischer and her colleagues.
"The Doppler technique will continue to scrutinize our nearest neighbors," Fischer said. "These nearby stars offer the best chance for follow up with future NASA missions such as the Space Interferometry Mission or the Terrestrial Planet Finder."
OGLEing planets
The new discovery was made possible by a separate research team, which last year surveyed millions of stars in a crowded patch of sky. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey identified several dozen stars toward the center of our galaxy that appeared to have something moving in front of them.
Importantly, the OGLE survey data were released to the public, so that any scientist could pursue the candidates.
The new work sought to figure out which of those orbiting objects were stellar companions and which might be planets. The OGLE stars were examined with the 1.5-meter telescope at Fred L. Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and the 6.5-meter Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Five promising candidates were then examined more closely using the HIRES instrument (High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer) at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
One star, OGLE-TR-56, was found to have a planet, which has been named OGLE-TR-56b.
Astronomers estimate the planet is about 2.6 times the size of Jupiter yet weighs slightly less, giving it a density similar to Saturn. It might have formed farther from the star before migrating to its current close orbit.
Its atmosphere is about 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 Kelvin). Such a temperature is just right to form clouds of iron atoms. When it rains, what comes down would likely be microscopic droplets of iron, Sasselov and his colleagues said.
The total number of known planets outside our solar system now exceeds 100, though some of these otherworlds require confirming observations. <end>
Heres the link: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_transit_030106.html
Way-Out World: New Technique Finds Most Distant Planet Ever
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 03:30 pm ET
06 January 2003
SEATTLE - The most distant known planet, a large and hot world pelted by iron rain and orbiting a star about 5,000 light-years away, has been found with a new and promising search technique.
The discovery extends astronomers capabilities for planet hunting beyond the roughly 160 light-years of nearby space in which other planets had been found. The number of stars that can now be examined jumps from 40,000 to 100 million or more, said the scientists involved in the discovery.
The planet is about the size of Jupiter and orbits its host star every 29 hours, closer than Mercury is to our Sun. It was discovered because it crosses in front of the star, as seen from Earth. Astronomers measured a slight dip in starlight as the planet transits the star.
The effect is akin to watching a mosquito flying in front of a searchlight two hundred miles away, the researchers said.
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/hf_planet_transit_030106_01.jpg
An artist's impression of the newfound planet, which is roughly the size of Jupiter and orbits very close to its host star.
While only a small percentage of planets can be conveniently configured this way, this transit method shows great promise for finding more of them, experts say. Previously, all firm planet detections were made by the so-called wobble method, in which astronomers note slight wobbles in stars induced by the gravitational tug of an orbiting world.
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
A transiting-planet discovery had been pursued for several months by about 20 research groups and was not unexpected, though its occurrence is marks a milestone in the search for other worlds.
"We stand on the threshold of a new era of exploration and discovery," said Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov. "We have found a better way to detect new worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy that paves the way for future planetary discoveries."
More to come
Other astronomers were excited, too.
"The transit method will yield many detections in coming years," said Debra Fischer, a University of California, Berkeley astronomer and a member of the most successful planet hunting team on Earth. Fischer's crew, led by Geoffrey Marcy at Berkeley and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, detects planets by the wobble method.
In an interview last week, Fischer, who had seen the new results, said the two techniques should prove complementary.
Fischer's wobble method, also known as the Doppler technique, works only for stars within about 160 light-years, she explained. It also requires huge telescopes and lengthy observations -- equal to the time it takes a planet to make a complete orbit. The transit method, which can use moderate-sized telescopes, is limited to crowded star fields, where the enormous number of stars offer a good chance for a detection even though the odds are low for each star.
The transit method's most important advantage is that it yields far more information about the planets it finds. In fact, it was used in 2001 to re-examine a transiting planet that had been first discovered by the wobble method. The transit observations provided the first measurements ever made of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.
Ultimately, however, nearer planets can be more thoroughly examined by space-based observatories planned for launch over the next decade, providing ample reason for other research groups to continue the sorts of searches done by Fischer and her colleagues.
"The Doppler technique will continue to scrutinize our nearest neighbors," Fischer said. "These nearby stars offer the best chance for follow up with future NASA missions such as the Space Interferometry Mission or the Terrestrial Planet Finder."
OGLEing planets
The new discovery was made possible by a separate research team, which last year surveyed millions of stars in a crowded patch of sky. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey identified several dozen stars toward the center of our galaxy that appeared to have something moving in front of them.
Importantly, the OGLE survey data were released to the public, so that any scientist could pursue the candidates.
The new work sought to figure out which of those orbiting objects were stellar companions and which might be planets. The OGLE stars were examined with the 1.5-meter telescope at Fred L. Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and the 6.5-meter Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Five promising candidates were then examined more closely using the HIRES instrument (High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer) at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
One star, OGLE-TR-56, was found to have a planet, which has been named OGLE-TR-56b.
Astronomers estimate the planet is about 2.6 times the size of Jupiter yet weighs slightly less, giving it a density similar to Saturn. It might have formed farther from the star before migrating to its current close orbit.
Its atmosphere is about 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 Kelvin). Such a temperature is just right to form clouds of iron atoms. When it rains, what comes down would likely be microscopic droplets of iron, Sasselov and his colleagues said.
The total number of known planets outside our solar system now exceeds 100, though some of these otherworlds require confirming observations. <end>
Heres the link: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_transit_030106.html