ESO
Posted on 04/24/2019 11:21:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Astronomers have managed to capture an amazingly clear image of CVSO 30c - a potential exoplanet orbiting a distant star named CVSO 30, that lies some 1,200 light-years away.
Besides being breathtaking to look at, researchers are extra excited about the new photo, because it could mean that CVSO 30 actually has two planets orbiting it instead of just one.
Follow-up observations and analysis will be needed to confirm CVSO 30c as a true exoplanet, but if verified, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet and a far-out exoplanet.
Four years ago, astronomers found a different exoplanet - named CVSO 30b, which is too faint to see in this photo - orbiting the star, thanks to the transit method. This involves detecting planets by looking at how a star's light flickers when something passes in front of it.
Unlike CVSO 30b, which orbits remarkably close to CVSO 30 at a distance of roughly 1.2 million kilometres (744,000 miles), and takes only 11 hours to complete one lap, CVSO 30c is way further out, at a distance of 98,730,000,000,000 kilometres (61,347,977,809,592 miles) or 660 AU - a unit that's equivalent to the distance between Earth and the Sun.
In other words, CVSO 30c is 660 times further from its star than we are from our Sun.
At this distance, it takes CVSO 30c about 27,000 years to orbit CVSO 30 just once.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
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Having been a teenager in the early '70s I'd be more interested in visiting the far-out exoplanet.
Close-in makes me kind of uptight, man.
and a teen would definitely go for 9,000 years of summer. Winter would be a bummer tho
Maybe the Men In Black can answer that. But I can't find an email addr or phone# for them
Not to mention the 18,000 year school years. That’s a lot of detention!
??? Something not quite right here, or perhaps because it's 3am here, but am I reading this correctly?
61.3 TRILLION miles is the same distance as between the Earth and Sun ???
660 units x 93,000,000 miles?
No. An AU (astronomical unit) is the earth-sun distance. This is 660 of those units.
and all of 'em have been given that MiB memory flasher thing.
:^) Either way, a lotta miles.
:^D
So this exoplanet is actually 61.3 TRILLION miles from its star ...
But the article should make that clearer, that ONE AU is the distance between Earth and our Sun, instead it reads as if 61.3 Trillion is that distance ....
It would be tricky trying to remember that February had 756,000 days in it, except during a leap year. Cue the rimshot guy, that's one of those jokes that just doesn't make a lick of sense, but is funny anyway. That's my story, I'm stickin' to it.
Is this supposed to be “exciting” news, because if it is, I ain’t feeling it.
Wilbur, did you leave the light on in the barn?
This ‘Exo Planet’ is over 10 light years away from it’s star. More like 660,000 AU. It’s not a planet, it’s a dim little star.
Note that the pale blue dot in the image is the star; the planet is the tiny tiny brown pixel at about the 10:30 -11:00 o’clock position off of the star.
The really “exciting” news is that the scientists have managed to develop a direct image of the planet vice inferring one. If I understand the magnitude of the accomplishment correctly (and it is one), this requires them to not only know its orbital period but also to know where it is in that orbit to have confidence that the image is, in fact, an image of the planet.
Also, keep in mind that in addition to its 27,000 year orbit around its home star, the planet is 1200 light years away. So the image provided is the image of the planet about the time of Charlemagne.
The planet itself is so far distant from its sun (at 660 AU) that liquid water doesn’t exist on its surface. The brown color of the image is likely an indication of a rock hard frozen surface.
See, miles are much, much more precise than kilometers, which are more precise than AU. It's amazing how unit conversions add precision!
It also looks like they helped themselves to few extra orders of magnitude out of open stock, as it were. An astronomical unit is 149,597,870,700 meters, not kilometers.
How about 660 AU or about 100,000,000,000 kilometers or 62,000,000,000 miles. (There is some confusion about whether a billion means 1 followed by 9 zeros or 12. The British have adopted the U.S. convention, 9 zeros only recently. Otherwise, I would have said 100 billion and 62 billion.)
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