Kepler telescope has turned up five 'exoplanets,' NASA scientist announces

[n2doc]

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 4, 2010; 11:33 AM
The universe is looking more familiar and yet stranger at the same time.

Monday morning at an astronomy meeting here in Washington, the lead scientist for a new NASA space telescope announced the discovery of five more "exoplanets" far beyond our own solar system, and expressed optimism that his team is on a path to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit in the near future.

But the new trove of data from the telescope named Kepler has also turned up space oddities that make astronomers wonder what exactly they're looking at.

For example, Kepler found a star with a small orbiting object that is hotter than the star itself. The object is too hot to be a planet but is the wrong size and density to fit any known profile for a dwarf star.

One of the five planets announced by William J. Borucki, the top scientist for the telescope, is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam," he said.

more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010401366.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. "it has the density of Styrofoam" Damn interplanetary litterbugs. LOL

[Uben]

2. Could just be.....

....someone from the space station threw out a coffee cup!

[roguevalley]

3. love this stuff. thank you so much.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. I'm noticing more of these kind of articles making it to DU.

Maybe one of the benefits of this economic slow down is that we have more brilliant minds stopping by the newsgroup?

[Posteritatis]

5. Astronomy's simply been really busy the last few months, too

Exoplanet discovery's sped up really, really dramatically in the last year, a few really good new telescopes have been inaugurated, etc.

[Phoonzang]

7. You'll change your mind once one of the "Blar! We should spend that money on Earth!"

posters shows up. :)

[n2doc]

6. More info on the "hot planet" discovery

In sifting through the Kepler data taken so far, postdoctoral student Jason Rowe found a very curious light signature. When an object passed behind its central star, the light from the system dropped significantly. This means the object -- called KOI 74b -- must be glowing fiercely with its own light that was blocked out when the object was eclipsed.

In fact calculations show that the mystery object is hotter than the parent star. It is seething at 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit while the parent star is 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The strange object can’t be a star because the transit data show that it is no bigger than Jupiter. It is so close to the central star it completes an orbit in 23 days.

If that isn't weird enough, a super-hot Neptune-sized companion called KOI 81b was found orbiting another star with a 5.2-day orbital period.

Both parent stars are hot and short-lived A-class stars that bathe the companions in a torrent of ultraviolet light. What's more, gravitational tidal effects would heat the interiors of the companion objects. But that still probably doesn’t explain why the mystery objects are so unbelievably hot, even if they were newborn planets. (The hottest confirmed exoplanet to date in 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit.)

One idea is that a white dwarf migrated close to the primary star and was gravitationally stripped of some of its mass. With less mass and therefore lower gravity the dwarf would swell to the size of Jupiter.
more:
http://news.discovery.com/space/blazing-stellar-companion-defies-explanation.html