Posted on 07/13/2005 5:07:51 PM PDT by KevinDavis
That's a stellar thought in light of this discovery!
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The reason for this disparity is that the main technique for locating planets -- the radial velocity method -- is not well-suited for finding planets with more than one star.
"Single stars are much easier to work with, since the shape of the spectrum stays the same," Konacki explained.
By watching for wobbles in a star’s spectrum, astronomers can infer the gravitational tug from a nearby planet. But when there is a companion star, its light competes with that of the main star. Konacki has developed a method to extract the planet wobbles from this messy, combined spectrum. He found this triple-sun planet in the first 20 stars he looked at. He plans to survey about 450 stars in the future.
The discovery is reported in the July 14 issue of Nature. Animations created by JPL's PlanetQuest show the orbital motion of the system, as well as what it looks like from a hypothetical moon.
Is it true that the P.C. people are trying to change the name of Uranus to Urectum?
Regardless of my goofed reply in # 40- I truly love your enthusiasm! By all means possible- let's keep looking!
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