©SETI Institute
Posted on 08/14/2015 2:15:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The planet, called 51 Eridani b, is only 20 million years old a mere infant by astronomy standards. (Jupiter, the sun and Earth are all about 4.5 billion years old.) It is the first planet detected by the Gemini Planet Imager, or GPI, which was designed to discover and analyze faint, young planets orbiting bright, nearby stars...
Larkin and colleagues at UCLA's Infrared Laboratory for Astrophysics developed and built GPI's highly advanced spectrometer, which enabled the instrument to detect the presence of methane on 51 Eridani b. It revealed that the planet has the strongest concentration of methane ever detected on a planet outside the Milky Way as well as the presence of water which indicates that it's similar to planets in our solar system and should yield additional clues about how the planet formed.
The spectrograph produces 18 images at different wavelengths of light, which enables GPI to reject light from nearby stars, which can be up to 10 million times brighter than the planets being studied. The light from 51 Eridani b is very faint; its nearest star is 3 million times brighter...
The newly discovered planet orbits a little farther from its parent star than Saturn does from the sun. It is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. Until now, the gas giant planets that have been directly detected have been much larger five to 13 times Jupiter's mass, Fitzgerald said.
The scientists reported that 51 Eridani b has a temperature of 800 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead, but still rather cold compared with other gas giants, which reach temperatures above 1,000 degrees. Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.
(Excerpt) Read more at spaceref.com ...
©SETI Institute
another new one:
Astronomers Discover A New Exoplanet Orbiting in ‘Habitable Zone’ of Two Stars
Posted On Aug 14 2015
By : Tina Kim
If there were life on the planet however, they would witness a sky much like the one shown on the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars film franchise with two blazing suns which orbit each other every 27 days. Kepler-453b is the tenth example of a planet orbiting a binary star system that Kepler has found.
http://celebcafe.org/astronomers-discover-a-new-exoplanet-orbiting-in-habitable-zone-of-two-stars-4906/
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Well, there’s my next vacation!
Outside? Good! It would be pretty shocking if a new one was discovered INSIDE our solar system.
Twice the size of Jupiter? Wow. Jupiter’s Big Red Spot itself is twice as big as Earth.
If the planet is outside the Milky Way we would not detect it. We don't have that capability (yet). Perhaps they meant "It revealed that the planet has the strongest concentration of methane ever detected on a planet outside the Solar system."
They detected a planet outside our galaxy?
That looks like one of them there journalistic ignorance things. I believe it should have been “outside the Solar System”.
“I like DeSoto.”
“What did he do?”
“He discovered the Mississippi.”
“Like they wouldn’t have found that anyway.”
It’s a big one. The mass of Jupiter is something over 300 times that of Earth, and I believe the mass of the Sun is over 300 times that of Jupiter.
Can I have your guns?
The largest planet, Jupiter, is 0.09% the mass of the Sun, while the Earth is about three millionths (0.000003%) of the mass of the Sun.
| Name | Mass (kg) |
| Sun | 1.989 × 1030 |
| Jupiter | 1.899 × 1027 |
| Earth | 5.974 × 1024 |
| Venus | 4.868 × 1024 |
| Mars | 6.418 × 1023 |
| Mercury | 3.302 × 1023 |
Isa 51:16
And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.
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