TrES-2 passes in front of its host star near the 'edge' of the star's disc, making it an ideal candidate for study (Image: Jeffrey Hall/Lowell Observatory)
TrES-2 passes in front of its host star near the 'edge' of the star's disc, making it an ideal candidate for study (Image: Jeffrey Hall/Lowell Observatory)
Alien planet poised to reveal all its secretsLuhman argues that any future definition of the term that includes extrasolar planets should stipulate that the objects form from a disc of gas and dust around their host star – and not from a collapsing gas cloud.
by David Shiga
8 September 2006
This find would be excluded from planetary status if such a definition were adopted, a situation that Luhman says is interesting in itself. "It's a neat idea that you have a planetary-mass companion that may not really be a planet," he says.
This is an impressive feat!
So neener, neener.
< |:)~
TrèS Intéressant!
forgot to ping ya.
I should have noted this before:
"Computer simulation of a transit of TrES-2. Credit: Jeffrey Hall, Lowell Observatory"
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0609/19planet/
"For a guy who has been working on the Kepler Mission in one way or another for the last 15 years, it's exhilarating to be involved in the discovery of the first transiting planet in Kepler's field of view!" said Edward Dunham, Lowell Observatory instrument scientist and a founding co-investigator of the TrES network... Finding a planet in the Kepler field with the current method allows astronomers to plan future observations with Kepler that include searching for moons around TrES-2... By definition, a transiting planet passes directly between Earth and the star, causing a slight reduction in the light in a manner similar to that caused when the moon passes between the sun and Earth during a solar eclipse. According to Francis O'Donovan, an Irish graduate student in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, "When TrES-2 is in front of the star, it blocks off about one and a half percent of the star's light, an effect we can observe with our TrES telescopes," said O'Donovan, lead author of the paper announcing the discovery in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
