Topic awaiting preservation: Astronomers View New Planets

Astronomers View New Planets

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Harvard astronomers and a team of scientists from NASA?s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) announced at a press conference on Tuesday that they measured thermal radiation from two planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, marking the first successful direct observation of extrasolar planets.

Over the last 10 years, astronomers have detected more than 130 planets around other stars, but the detections have always been indirect, according to Assistant Professor of Astronomy David Charbonneau, who led the Harvard team.

Previously, astronomers inferred the presence of planets from their effect on their central stars? orbit, he said.

?Until yesterday, no one had talked about measuring [light from the planet itself] directly,? said Charbonneau, who researches at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, based in Cambridge.

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Simply incredible!

Let the exploration begin!

Wow!

The Spitzer Space Telescope gonna smoke with all the astronomers pointing it towards extra-solar planets.

Neat! We finally have the confirmation! They didn't mention what star they were orbiting though... I would have liked to know that.

Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you, rebuke a wise man and he will love you.

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We finally have the confirmation!

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Which confirmation I hope you're not talking about the confirmation that there is some planets outside of the solar system 'coz as the articles says: over the last 10 years, astronomers have detected more than 130 planets around other stars.

Hopefully, they will be able to refine this process to be even more precise - and then be able to find and observe Earth-like planets.

Then it is just a matter of time...

I had heard they did not expect a direct obvservation, of the kind described above, before at least 5 more years. Once again science goes faster than our expectations.

The next steps are : the research of telluric planets, and ultimately the observation of the surface of the extra solar planets.

It is just a matter of time. But you can bet it will be a *long* time before we get to another solar system. Exploring and populating this one is going to take up our attention for quite a while I suspect. I see a moonbase followed by colonies on Mars as our first real footprint off this planet.

: . . DHTML Slice Puzzle : . . .

what a nice new technique...


webshaman, you cant observe the planets at such distance, it will be the same as trying to resolve atoms using optical lenght radiation. i'm not saying human eyes don't have enough resolution. it is light that doesnt.

but it is still pretty neat, your idea.

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WebShaman said:
Then it is just a matter of time...

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A matter of lots of time, but time nonetheless.

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Charbonneau said he hopes to make infrared observations on smaller, rockier planets in the future, which he said is exciting because these planets are similar to Earth.

?Our big hope is...to compare planets and see how they differ from properties of planets in our own solar system,? he said.

Professor of Astronomy Dimitar D. Sasselov said he foresees further research in this area throughout the coming year.

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Never say never.

As Poi pointed out, it wasn't expected that they would be able to view extrasolar planets yet. If the process can be made more precise, then yes, they will be able to view earth-type planets.

And should they find a planet that seems to have much of Earth's chemical "fingerprint" and it is nearby (not millions of light years, etc), then maybe sending a probe might be considerable.