[RightWhale]

New solar system like ours but 90 lightyears away.

[KantianBurke]

how long is a "lightyear" might I ask?

[reagan_fanatic]

Oh great...another planet those evil white male Christian Conservatives can pollute with their gas-guzzling SUV's

/sarcasm

[Sam Cree]

Are they implying that earth like planets may also be orbiting this star?

[Our man in washington]

Well, if there is a planet out there, we need to send a sizable portion of our planet to go there immediately. We're running out of room on this planet and we're destroying mother earth, you know. (snicker.)

I think we need to send the liberals first, to make sure the new planet has a functioning welfare system and environmental regulations before the rest of humanity arrives. Or at least that's what we can tell them.

[Aric2000]

I'll let Junior and Patrick ping the rest.

Pretty cool stuff, thanks Rightwhale!!

[LibWhacker]

Can't wait for VLT to become fully operational. I believe it'll be able to image earth-sized planets out to 50ly or so. Too bad Europeans are running the show.

[rockfish59]

PLAN 90 FROM OUTER SPACE

[gitmo]

Reckon they have liberals there?

[colorado tanker]

Hmmm. They may have found the Dagobah System.

[Cacique]

btt

[Knightsofswing]

Hey let's find out if it is a liveable place. Let's send all of the liberals there to set up their utiopa!

[aristeides]

90 light years away puts it in the Milky Way, does it not? What part of the Milky Way is it in?

[KevinDavis]

Space Ping! This is the space ping list! Let me know if you want on or off this list!

[petuniasevan]

Thanks for the ping, RightWhale.

For you non-astronomers out there, realize that we do NOT see the planet in orbit around its star. That would be like finding a firefly circling a bank of floodlights.

Instead, astronomers carefully plot a star's movement (proper motion). If the star seems to wobble, that is carefully measured and the mass of the unseen object is inferred from the interplay between the two objects. Incidentally, the star's mass is determined the same way.

This process can take years of exacting, precise measurements and careful data interpretation. Don't want to forget to factor in Earth's own movement (yes, that did happen - embarrassing to all involved).

Stats for this star:

HD70642 --- RA 08:21:28 dec. -39:42:21 magnitude 7.17

RA is Right Ascension (longitude) and dec. is declination (latitude) projected onto the sky. Magnitude is apparent brightness. It is a logarithmic scale of brightness, with lower numbers being brighter. The dimmest naked-eye magnitude under excellent conditions varies according to visual acuity, but averages about magnitude 6.

I'll take this opportunity to show where the constellation Puppis (the Stern) is. If Canis Major is visible (Look for brilliant star Sirius) to the left of Orion, then Puppis is to the lower left of Canis Major.

The bright streak is an overexposed Sirius.

[JoeSchem]

New solar system like ours but 90 lightyears away.

Isn't that the distance in Star Trek to that resort planet, Risa or whatever?

[zeebee]

The interesting thing is, if there is intelligent life there, they would only now be just starting to receive our first radio broadcast transmissions from 90 years ago (when radio first began).

Our planet would have seemed dead to them until today.

Of course it is impossible to think about travelling there, but radio transmissions travel at the speed of light so anything we pick up from each other occurred 90 years ago.

They will not be able to see our first television broadcasts (from 1927) until 2017.

[Liberal Classic]

As interesting as it is to infer the existance of gas giants by the wobble of their parent stars, I hesitate to call this a home away from home since nothing can be inferred about any terrestrial planets that may exist in orbit. To my knowledge (which is admittedly lacking in some areas) we have only observed one planet directly, when it passed in front of its star relative to our position. The rest we see by measuring the osillations of a star and we can only measure the largest planets this way. Nothing is yet known about small terrestrial worlds like ours. Our small world wouldn't add a wobble that we could now measure from lightyears away, but we could infer Jupiter's and Saturn's pull. I think what this article boils down to is since this system has a gas giant in the middle, there might be rocky plantes closer in. Since we don't have a moonbase yet I'm nonplussed.

[liberalnot]

when do we move?

and can we leave hillary here?

[BJungNan]

It's just God having a good laugh holding up a mirror. It's our own reflection.