I couldn't believe it when I saw it, the first real proof that there are other worlds orbiting distant stars. University of Toronto researchers managed to snap an image of a gas giant planet orbiting more than 330 AU's from it's parent star, 1RXS J160929.1-210524. Both objects are about 500 light years away.
There are tons of implications of this discovery, but for the moment, I just want to sit back and wonder at something I never thought I would ever see.
Another world. In a completely different star system.
Amazing.
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9 comments:
Yeah, I spot this info yesterday. Great news!
Amazing. Is it weird that I got a little emotional seeing this?
No, it's weird more people haven't made a big deal about this.
Can't disagree with that, Mike.
Also, is it just me or does the star look to have a hexagonal shape? The very bright white part in the middle looks almost like a hexagon. Could this be related to some sort of hyperdimensional physics, or am I just looking to closely at things?
After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.
Is amazing because like Adam Burrows of Princeton University says:
If this object is a planet at such a wide separation it would challenge our conceptions of planet and companion formation.
But if the body does turn out to orbit the young sunlike star, which has the unwieldy name 1RXS J160929.1-210524, it could pose a problem for planet formation theories. A widely accepted model suggests that the planet-forming disks of gas, dust and ice that surround newborn stars concentrate most of their material close to their stars.
If that is a separation of
330 AUs, then---
1 - That planet is huge.
2 - That star is REALLY huge.
Our most distant gas giant, Neptune, is only
about 30 AUs from our Sun.
And these objects are a mere 500 light years
from here?
I'M MOVING!!!!! :-))
:-)
Hathor -- The Queen of U-Haul
;-)
P.S.: Picture a Go'a'uld Ha' Tak painted up
in orange-and-white....
:-))))
Remember though, the picture is near infrared, so you're seeing heat as opposed to visible light.
Ah!
So---
Persons on an inhabited planet only 1 AU
from the star would not be able to "see"
that they were being incinerated....
Right! Understood! ;-))
:-)
Hathor -- Writing the new material
;-)
P.S.: I wonder how our own system would
look using the same photographic technique
and spectrum, taken from that system?
Would we make a hot pic, or what?
:-))))
Crispy-
I see it also -Should have been looking for the hyper signature!
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