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Some awesome astronomy for today

Old Jun 11, 2010 | 06:52 AM
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Default Some awesome astronomy for today

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastro...ts-parent-star/

The first confirmed direct observation of an extra-solar planet orbiting its star.

(there are a handful of other images of extra-solar planets, and this is composed of one image taken years ago and another just taken, but it's the first visual confirmation of an extra-solar orbit)



Article explains what you're looking at, but the cliffs are that the dot in the middle represents a nearby star (blacked out so you can see), and the two blobs in the middle are superimposed observations of the same object taken several years apart, with its orbit around the star traced (upon a single observation, they couldn't confirm that it was actually a planet orbiting a star, but now they have photographic evidence of the orbit).
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Old Jun 11, 2010 | 01:00 PM
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That's pretty cool.
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Old Jun 11, 2010 | 08:20 PM
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i'm not sure i understand. so they have taken a photo of a planet orbiting a star? is life possible on there?
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Old Jun 11, 2010 | 11:02 PM
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possibly but it's most likely just a giant rock or gas giant (more likely) like jupiter.

There are hundreds of extra solar planets that have been recoded through various means such as looking at the change in color of objects which is due to them moving in an orbit, or the jiggle of stars which is suspected to be due to a planet's orbit tugging on the star.

this seems to be the first documented case of VISUAL proof that there is a body orbiting a star.

Astronomy 101 is all i know lol, it was fun though
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Old Jun 12, 2010 | 09:43 AM
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thumbsup1.gif Very Cool
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Old Jun 14, 2010 | 01:48 PM
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Life as we know it is not possible on that planet. It's 9 times more massive than Jupiter, and has an elliptical orbit only coming in about as close as Saturn is to our sun. That doesn't mean that there is no life, it's just even less likely than finding life on Jupiter.

There have been over 450 exoplanets discovered so far. Because of the methods used to detect them indirectly there have been only a couple that are likely potential candidates for Earth-like life. One for instance orbits it's parent star (Gliese 581) near the hot side of the "goldilocks zone" (not too hot, not too cold, but just right) and is about twice as massive as the Earth. In the same planetary system one orbits near the back of the goldilocks zone. So it is even possible that there would be 2 habitable planets in that one system.
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