Super-sensitive Camera Captures a Direct Image of an Exoplanet

[jakeXT]

The world’s newest and most powerful exoplanet imaging instrument, the recently-installed Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope, has captured its first-light infrared image of an exoplanet: Beta Pictoris b, which orbits the star Beta Pictoris, the second-brightest star in the southern constellation Pictor. The planet is pretty obvious in the image above as a bright clump of pixels just to the lower right of the star in the middle (which is physically covered by a small opaque disk to block glare.) But that cluster of pixels is really a distant planet 63 light-years away and several times more massive — as well as 60% larger — than Jupiter!

And this is only the beginning.

While many exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed over the past couple of decades using various techniques, very few have actually been directly imaged. It’s extremely difficult to resolve the faint glow of a planet’s reflected light from within the brilliant glare of its star — but GPI was designed to do just that.

“Most planets that we know about to date are only known because of indirect methods that tell us a planet is there, a bit about its orbit and mass, but not much else,” said Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who led the team that built the instrument. “With GPI we directly image planets around stars – it’s a bit like being able to dissect the system and really dive into the planet’s atmospheric makeup and characteristics.”

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/107854/super-sensitive-camera-captures-a-direct-image-of-an-exoplanet/

[Warren DeMontague]

1. That's cool.

Can't wait until the JWST is up, that should be pretty interesting.

[Locut0s]

2. I'm both exciting and terrified over the JWST...

Excited for all the amazing images and scientific data is promises to produce. Terrified that it will fail. This thing is super ambitious and risky. There is so much new in its design that has never been tried out before. Of central importance is the huge tennis court sized sun shade that has to unfold perfectly. I'll cross my fingers three times over when it launches.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Yeah, what you said.

I'm trying not to think too much about that aspect, of course if something goes wrong it will be a massive chorus of "WHYYYYY ARE WE SPENDING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THIS SORT OF STUPID THING???"

[Cleita]

4. Very cool.

[Hestia]

5. JWST = James Webb Space Telescope for those of us who do not know of these

technologies nor work in the field.

Interesting article!