The newfound planet VB 10b orbits a cool red dwarf star in an artist's conception. Both the planet and its tiny parent star are thought to be about the same size as Jupiter, astronomers announced in May 2009. -- Image courtesy NASA/JPL
Posted on 05/31/2009 1:06:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Using a technique called astrometry, scientists have spotted an extrasolar planet that's thought to be the same size as its parent star... By contrast, Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is only a tenth the width of the sun. The newfound gas giant, called VB 10b, orbits a red dwarf star, a relatively cool, small star less than half the mass of the sun. Although both are roughly the size of Jupiter, the planet orbits the star because the star is much more massive. VB 10b's discovery is the culmination of a 12-year search using an instrument at California's Palomar Observatory. The telescope attachment specializes in astrometry, a technique first tried 50 years ago that measures the minute back-and-forth motions of a star created by the gravitational tug of an unseen planet. Most of the previous planet-hunting attempts have had more luck with the radial velocity -- or Doppler wobble -- method, which measures stellar movement toward and away from Earth. Radial velocity and other techniques are better at finding very massive worlds in tight orbits around their stars. Astrometry, on the other hand, could open the door to finding a whole new class of planets that were difficult to spot before, said study author Stuart Shaklan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California... That aspect of the technique, however, remains unproven. VB 10b, which lies about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, orbits its tiny star at the same distance at which Mercury orbits our sun... It's conceivable that VB 10b has rocky neighbors, Shaklan said, but this would have to be verified with other telescopes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
The newfound planet VB 10b orbits a cool red dwarf star in an artist's conception. Both the planet and its tiny parent star are thought to be about the same size as Jupiter, astronomers announced in May 2009. -- Image courtesy NASA/JPL
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I’m not astrophysicist but I’m pretty sure that the planet in question would NOT qualify as a class M planet.
Wow. The Universe is so huge. You think maybe there are other solar systems similar to ours with other living beings similar to us living on them?
How big is “your” God? Mine’s Gi-normous.
That’s okay, the star isn’t too good either. :’)
What does that diagram...rendering... say?
**************************EXCERPT************************
Orbital Dance
Astronomer Paul Kalas, also at UC Berkeley, found the first visible-light picture of an exoplanet in a 2005 Hubble image of the dusty disk around the star Fomalhaut.
Astronomers had suspected since the 1980s that a planet might exist there, but they needed more observations to confirm the find, which was announced in 2008.
"Proving that an object is a planet and not a faint background star requires evidence that the object moves along with the star in space," Kalas said.
"With archival [Hubble] data, we would be able to find planet candidates, but confirmation requires observations at later dates, after the star has moved a bit relative to the field of distant background stars."
Overall, Kalas said, a successful planet-finding program might combine archived telescope pictures with new data from ground-based observatories.
The popular candidate in recent decades, well, at least the past 60 or so years, is Alpha Centauri, which is very similar to our Sun, and is the closest star that resembles ours (Proxima Centauri is closer, but is dark and small). It’s the fictional location of Vulcan, Spock’s homeworld. :’) The extrasolar planets discovered so far have been big ones, because the distances involved pretty much preclude finding anything very small using available methods and technology. That is changing of course, and a planet about twice the size of the Earth has been identified far off. :”)
Reminds me of a movie where they discover a mirror of the planet earth orbiting directly opposite the sun on the far side of the solar system, undetectable until the time setting of the movie because of the sun’s obscuration from earth.
What is the name of the movie?
Any Sci-fi trivia experts out there?
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun?
I think you are right... You get the prize, and now I don’t feel so old. :)
Excellent question. I tuned into the late night talk show Coast to Coast last week and the guest was someone arguing against the existence of life on other planets. His argument seemed to be that there cannot be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, because then Jesus, who is man's savior, would not have been able to save the extraterrestrial beings as well, therefore there cannot be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Repelled by his laughable logic, I turned it off. His must be a micro-God. I'm with you. I think that our poor conception of God is incredibly limited.
Thanks!
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