Extrasolar Planets Discovered
For the first time in history, planetary systems much like our own have been photographically documented by human technology. The photographs show Fomalhaut, a star located 25 light-years away from Earth, being orbited by a single planet. Another system has also been discovered circling the star HR 8799, roughly 130 light-years away. While this may not mean much to some, for those in the astronomy community this news is Earth-shattering, so to speak. The existence of other planets beyond those in our solar system has been long considered a certainty, but for the first time ever planets have been found, photographed, and identified.
Of the four now known planets, the first to be discovered is the tentatively titled Fomalhaut b. Fomalhaut b was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope and is four times further from Fomalhaut than Neptune is to the sun. The other three planets were discovered by land-based telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Both the land-based telescopes and the Hubble were required to block out each system’s star in order to capture the orbiting planets. HR 8799 is one and a half times bigger than the Earth’s sun and is roughly five times as luminous. The planets surrounding HR 8799 were apparently easier to spot than Fomalhaut b because of their young age. All three planets are believed to be less than 60 billion years old.
The discoveries made today have been a long time in the making, with early observations beginning as early as 1998. The findings were published today in Science Magazine and officially released by NASA.
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- Writen on: Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
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- Categorized as: Science News
- Tag as: exoplanet, fomalhaut b, hr8799, hst, hubble, nasa, planet
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