HUBBLE TAKES FIRST PICS OF PLANET AROUND ANOTHER STAR!

[n2doc]

Sorry for the all caps, but this is extraordinary!

Scientists take first photos of planets orbiting stars



A Berkeley team uses the Hubble telescope to take a picture of Fomalhaut b, a newly found exoplanet. Another second team in Hawaii snaps photos of three other planets orbiting a young star.

By John Johnson Jr.
12:03 PM PST, November 13, 2008
Marking a milestone in the search for Earth-like planets elsewhere in the universe, two teams of astronomers have parted the curtains of space to take the first pictures in history of planets orbiting stars other than our sun.

"This is amazing," said Eugene Chiang, an astronomer at UC Berkeley. "It's almost science fiction. I didn't think this day would occur until years from now."

The first team, led by Berkeley researchers, used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a picture of a giant planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years from Earth.

Paul Kalas, the lead astronomer for the Berkeley team, said he "nearly had a heart attack" when he found the new planet, which he calls Fomalhaut b.

"It's a profound and overwhelming experience to lay eyes on a planet never before seen," he said.

The other effort relied on the giant Keck and Gemini telescopes in Hawaii to image three planets surrounding the young star HR8799, 130 light-years -- 700 trillion miles -- away. Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at UCLA and a member of the Keck-Gemini team, noted that it's only been about a decade since the first exoplanet -- a planet orbiting another star -- was found. He said he never envisioned being able to take a picture of a planet orbiting another star so soon.

Both discoveries were released Thursday by the journal Science.

"These two papers will represent a milestone in the field that people will look back on years from now," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-planet14-2008nov14,0,3039988.story

[n2doc]

1. Nasa Press release:

Image above: Artist's concept of the star Fomalhaut and the Jupiter-type planet that the Hubble Space Telescope observed. A ring of debris appears to surround Fomalhaut as well. The planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the 200-million-year-old star every 872 years. Credit: ESA, NASA, and L. Calcada (ESO for STScI)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish."

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says.

more with animations:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/fomalhaut.html

[bananas]

2. !

[ramapo]

3. Science is wonderful

I hope Obama makes sure we increase science and space research funding. I'm always happy to learn of these important discoveries.

[n2doc]

4. Keck Press release

Three exoplanets orbiting a young star 140 light years away are captured using Keck Observatory near-infrared adaptive optics. The planets are labeled and the two outer ones have arrows showing the size of their motion over a 4 year period.

ASTRONOMERS CAPTURE FIRST IMAGES OF NEWLY-DISCOVERED SOLAR SYSTEM

Kamuela, HI (November 13th, 2008) Using high-contrast, near-infrared adaptive optics observations with the Keck and Gemini telescopes atop Mauna Kea, astronomers for the first time have taken snapshots of a multi-planet solar system, much like ours, orbiting another star.

The new solar system orbits the dusty young star named HR8799, which is 140 light years away and about 1.5 times the size of our sun. Three planets, roughly 10, 10 and 7 times the mass of Jupiter, orbit the star. The sizes of the planets decrease with distance from the parent star, much like the giant planets do in our system.

And there may be more planets out there that scientists just haven't seen yet.
"Every extrasolar planet detected so far has been a wobble on a graph. These are the first pictures of an entire system," said Bruce Macintosh, an astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the key authors of a paper appearing in the Nov. 13 issue of Science Express. "We've been trying to image planets for eight years with no luck and now we have pictures of three planets at once."

The team of researchers from Livermore, the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada, Lowell Observatory, UCLA, and several other institutions were able to see three orbiting planetary companions to HR 8799. The first author of the paper is Christian Marois, a former Livermore postdoctoral researcher who now works at NRC.

Astronomers have known for a decade through indirect techniques that the sun was not the only star with orbiting planets.

"But we finally have an actual image of an entire system," Macintosh said. "This is a milestone in the search and characterization of planetary systems around stars."
http://www.keckobservatory.org/article.php?id=231

Funny how these things seem to happen at the same time....Must have been some late nights on both sides getting this written up!

[shireen]

7. the coincidence sound political, or maybe it's just tied to the publication date.

there's a perceived fierce rivalry over who can achieve the best resolution. Keck (Mauna Kea, Hawaii) used adaptive optics. Hubble got it with direct imaging using a high resolution camera with a coronagraph (ACS, currently not working, will be fixed during the servicing mission next May).

It's comparing apples with oranges, really. Both are good for different reasons.

As for who really saw the first planet directly? Depends on the dates of observation. The link to the Hubble science paper is not working (they're working in fixing it as i type this), and i haven't had time to hunt down the Keck science paper.

Both are great results!

edited: expanded title

[n2doc]

9. Oh I suspect both groups knew what the other group had

And Science will definitely try to group papers if they can. But this sort of finding gets published on the fast track, so I doubt Science held up either paper for very long to get them in the same issue. So both groups undoubtedly submitted nearly at the same time.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. I cannot wait until they find a planet with life other than Earth...

I just don't want them to have a book entitled "To Serve Man"...

[Bill McBlueState]

13. interesting

So the Simpsons' parody (i.e., "How to Cook for 40 People") was actually a reversal of the original Twilight Zone plot.

Pretty off-topic, I know, but your post inspired me to finally look that up.

[nichomachus]

6. Is it habitable? Can I go? I'm kind of sick of this one. n/t

[n2doc]

8. Another graphic from the NYT

[Arctic Dave]

10. I sit here in awe reading this. My jaw is on the floor.

[krispos42]

11. Direct visual contact...

Hot diggity damn!!!



We've GOT to get some kind of massive telescope in orbit. Something that makes Hubble look like a riflescope in comparison.

[n2doc]

12. Google "James Webb Telescope"

It's got next. 21 ft mirror...

[Odin2005]

14. Wow, just wow.

I'm F-ing speechless.

:wow:

Future generations will look upon this decade as the Golden Age of Planetary Science.

[TZ]

15. Cool but it makes me even angrier

at the fools in GD who think Hubble is a big expensive "camera" and a waste of money.....

[Forkboy]

16. In my not so humble opinion...

Even if we never learned a single thing from the pics Hubble has taken, it's worth the money just for the awe-inspiring beauty alone. I don't care if it gives us answers, I just like the questions. :)

[TZ]

17. True.

Beautiful pictures are indeed a plus..but I've been a fan of the Hubble ever since my HS astronomy teacher told me about it back in 1987....:)