Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 08/24/2010 8:54:34 AM PDT by edcoil
Astronomers have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets that orbit a star called HD 10180, which is much like our own Sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
All we need now is spaceship with warp drive.
Damn. That’s the problem with so many great minds around here. They’re bound to think alike... and spot the threads first.
First, Don't Panic.
Second, They won't be getting the 'I Love Lucy'
reruns for another 70-some years.
"It could be worse"
Just like Earth..it has one but not the other.
Without a Starbucks it can have nothing but intelligent life:-)>
They found Rigel?
It's rich so they probably have Whole Foods.
So far, the astronomers have picked up clear signals from five planets, along with two slightly "fuzzier" signals. One of these possible sixth and seventh planets was estimated to be just 1.4 times the mass of the Earth; if its presence in the system was confirmed, it would be the lowest mass exoplanet yet discovered.
And how many other similar systems are out there? A few trillion?
Intensely interesting. I wish my telescopes could see them.
They don’t know it yet, but what the astronomers have discovered is the big giant mirror half the supposed distance away...
cool astronomy bump for later....
I think you’ll find that in May the dark side of the earth faces HD 10180. They might not have seen the festivities during the day, but I suspect they got a big kick out of the fireworks program and the illuminations that evening!
BUMP
Certainly not within 127 LY of earth. Exoplanets are only detectable within a fairly small radius of earth with current technology, at most a few hundred light years. Inside this sphere there may be hundreds of planetary systems, but certianly not millions.
Rich? I hate ‘em already.
Their astronomers would conclude that the bridge was being blown up?
I found Rigel!
I obtained this image of the star Rigel earlier this year while in the process of aligning the secondary mirror of my telescope.
Look closely.....See it's tiny "companion star" at the upper right of Rigel.
Shot with a Canon 40D, raw, 25 x 15 second images, ISO-800 Astronomik filter, 6.3FR. combined, aligned and stacked in DSS.
Rigel is a Class B supergiant, though a contrasting blue. Rigel ranks 7th in visual brightness. At a distance of 860 light years it shines with the light of 85,000 Suns
Only about 10 million years old, Rigel should eventually expand to become a red supergiant and likely supernova.
Rigel is accompanied by a seventh magnitude companion nine seconds of arc away. The companion, at a distance of at least 2500 AU (60 times farther from Rigel than Pluto is from the Sun), must take at least 25,000 years to make an orbit.
I pretty much had the focus dead on and was quite pleased with the alignment of the instrument.
By the way, I think the number discovered within range of our instruments, is approaching the 500 mark.
One can imagine the tens of thousands being missed due to their small, undetectable signatures, the instruments limited search field, including those just beyond current detection range.
Awesome photo!
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