10 Years of Planet Hunting: Amazing Variety Out There

space.com ^ | 05/09/05 | Michael Schirber

[KevinDavis]

BALTIMORE – Astronomers met last week to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first planet discovered around a normal star other than the Sun. Although more than 130 other such planets have been found since then, the field still feels like it is just getting started.

[KevinDavis]

I'll be more excited when we find a Earth like planet.

[KevinDavis]

[cripplecreek]

At the rate our imaging technology is advancing we're going to see some amazing things in our lifetime.

[Redcloak]

Unfortunately, that imaging technology is more likely to be employed to detect Britney Spears scratching her butt on a beach at 20,000 yards than planets at 20,000 light years.

[LibWhacker]

In a way, I think all this variety is actually good news for life, since our observations nowadays are severely biased toward only one type of solar system: namely, those with Jovian planets orbiting close to their parent star.

Even looking mostly at those types of systems, we see all kinds of variety. So in the future, when we take the blinders off (i.e., get some really good, capable telescopes up and running), the implication is that the variety we'll see, over this much broader spectrum of solar systems, will be absolutely astounding -- including lots of systems with "earth-like" planets in nice stable orbits. Holy moly, I want to live long enough to see telescopes that can actually see earth-like planets out to a couple of hundred light years!! Twenty-five more years might do it.

[sigSEGV]

In this first ever picture of an extrasolar planet, they have detected water vapor. Too big and far away from its star to be Earthlike though.

[Centurion2000]

Holy moly, I want to live long enough to see telescopes that can actually see earth-like planets out to a couple of hundred light years!!

You and me both :)

[KevinDavis]

There can't be other Earth like planets.. It was not mentioned in the Bible!! /s

[SunkenCiv]

emphasis mine:

Newfound Planetary System Has 'Hometown' Look
NASA
June 13, 2002
55 Cancri simulation
55 Cancri comparison

Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and astronomer Dr. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C., today announced the discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star at nearly the same distance as the Jovian system orbits our Sun.

Jupiter-Like Planet Could Point to Another Earth
by Robert Roy Britt
13 June 2002

The primary discovery is a gas giant planet that circles a star called 55 Cancri every 13 years, comparable to Jupiter's 11.86-year orbit. The planet is between 3.5 and 5 times as heavy as Jupiter... The new planet orbits 55 Cancri at 5.5 astronomical units (AU). One AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun. Jupiter orbits at 5.2 AU. The same team had already spotted another planet around 55 Cancri, a place slightly less massive than Jupiter. It orbits so close to the star that it makes a complete orbit in just 14.6 days.