Posted on 08/08/2006 10:09:20 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The tiny star, known as Oph1622, is so small that it never lit up, a failed star known as a brown dwarf. Even among brown dwarfs, it is small, with a mass equal to 14 Jupiters, or about a 75th that of the Sun... In a paper published this week on the Web site of the journal Science, astronomers at the University of Toronto and the European Southern Observatory report that a photograph of Oph1622 also shows a planet nearly as large as the star itself, with a mass equal to seven Jupiters.
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
Hey, leave Robert Reich out of this!
Hi ho, hi ho.
well.... I always wanted to be a planet but I'd live with being a star
I'm wondering how close the companion mass is ... could the sum of the masses have prevented the brown dwarf from 'lighting up' due to the center of mass being too close to the outer region of the 'star'? The clue may be the 1 to 2 size ratio and a distance too close together.
Hey, you'll always be a star to us.
That's at least as good as serving as VP.
When are we supposed to have those new satellites launched? Isn't one supposed to be able to find new planets?
One of the problems inherent in the extrasolar discoveries is that the bodies discerned in the data tend to be a great deal different than anything in our home system. The 200+ planets found so far tend to be larger than Jupiter, with a number a bit smaller than Jupiter, but larger than our other gas giants. Perhaps these kinda freaky systems being found are unrepresentative of everything that is actually out there, but it will be a while before we'll find out if that's true. Meanwhile:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1570230/posts?page=15#15
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1570726/posts?page=44#44
Possible Earth-like planet discovered
Houston Comical (AP) | June 13, 2005, 2:14PM
Posted on 06/13/2005 3:42:00 PM EDT by The_Victor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1422069/posts
Researchers make sport of finding planets
Salt Lake Tribune | 15 Sept 2004 | Joseph B. Verrengia
Posted on 09/15/2004 1:18:07 PM EDT by balrog666
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1216830/posts
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Gliese&btnG=Google+Search
I'm not sure what that is.
British Search for Brown Dwarfs
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-4-2006-104564.asp
Destiny: The Dark Energy Space Telescope
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/3987
Orbital Telescopes
http://www.seds.org/~spider/oaos/oaos.html
55 Cancri
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/55cnc.html
"Farthest out, at 5.9 Astronomical Units (AU) from the star, is the most massive, 55 Cnc-d, which is at least 4.1 times the mass of Jupiter and takes 14.7 years to orbit. The other three are much closer and less massive. Next in order are 55 Cnc c, b, and e with minimum masses of 0.21, 0.84, 0.045 solar, orbital radii of 0.24, 0.11, 0.038 AU, and periods of 44, 14.7, and 2.81 days. The existence of 55 Cnc-c is questionable. 55 Cnc-e has the smallest measured minimum mass, only about that of Uranus or Neptune. It is also closest to its parent star, its orbit just 10 percent the size of that of Mercury... 55 Cancri is a mid-sixth magnitude star (magnitude 5.95) class G (G8) dwarf 41 years away. A bit cooler (5280 Kelvin) and carrying only 0.87 of a solar mass, it shines at just 58 percent of the luminosity of the Sun, its radius 0.9 solar."
well maybe it was talk and maybe they canceled... I wonder what it would be called? The Wobble Detector?
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