Hubble's Exoplanet Pics Outshined by Keck's

dtolman writes "Scientists at the Keck and Gemini telescopes stole the thunder of Hubble scientists announcing the first picture of an extrasolar world orbiting a star. Hubble scientists announced today that they were able to discover an extrasolar world for the first time by taking an actual image of the newly discovered exoplanet orbiting Fomalhaut — previous discoveries have always been made by detecting changes in the parent star's movement, or by watching the planet momentarily eclipse the star — not by detecting them in images. Hubble's time to shine was overshadowed though by the Keck and Gemini observatories announcing that they had taken pictures of not just one planet, but an entire alien solar system. The images show multiple planets orbiting the star HR 8799 — 3 have been imaged so far."

Gene Wolfe fans rejoice

A planet orbiting Fomalhaut? Well, it seems Gene Wolfe was prescient in his work The Book of the New Sun [amazon.com] when one of his characters contacts a wise civilization there on, as Wolfe uses the Arabic name, "the Fishes' Mouth".

Re:Gene Wolfe fans rejoice

It's unlikely there's any civilizations on ANY exoplanets we've discovered, since they're all gas giants. Civilizations like ours are only likely on small, rocky, warm planets, which are currently undetectable to us as they're too small, and too close to their stars.

Of course, Fomalhault "b" is only a temporary designation; if smaller planets are detected closer to the star, then one of those would become "b" I imagine. But even so, it still isn't likely there'd be a civilization on one of those, since this star is so young, and so would any planets orbiting it. If the age of this star is correct, it didn't even exist when our world had dinosaurs on it, which wasn't really that long ago considering the age of our planet.

As for moons, however, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Fomalhault's gas giant planets had some moons. Our own gas giants have tons of moons, many of them just tiny asteroids really. Surely at least a few stray asteroids have been captured by these gas giants over the past 60 million years.

The Author

Hello,
I think the discovery was made by the team led by Paul Kalas:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/index.html [berkeley.edu]

obligatory...

that's not a planet...

Re:obligatory...

It would be "That's no planet..."

I wish I could mod myself (-1: Pedantic)

Re:obligatory...

That's no mod choice!

Direct link to Hubble Press Release and pix

This came out after I posted the article... Hubble presents - Fomalhaut B [nasa.gov]! This graphic [nasa.gov] is particularly nice!

Colonization

I wanna live on the left dot.

Re:Colonization

If you can get there, it's yours.

Sorry

As deed holder via the International Star Registry, that includes a deed on any planets in orbit, I forbid it. Why, there might even be rich deposits of diamelles and/or Ginsu steak knives on that planet. I'm not giving it up without a fight.

Re:Sorry

As deed holder via the International Star Registry, that includes a deed on any planets in orbit, I forbid it. Why, there might even be rich deposits of diamelles and/or Ginsu steak knives on that planet. I'm not giving it up without a fight.

If it's interstellar war you want, sir, it's interstellar war you shall have! Have at you!

The similarities are stunning!

they are massive, young, hot planets that are probably mostly gaseous and completely inhospitable. They'd get along great with my ex!

In the hubble picture

In the hubble picture, does anyone else see the shadow of the Enterprise?

overshadowed?

Not entirely sure why the summary touches on one being overshadowed by the other.

On the contrary, the two works are complimentary, and it is thus no coincidence that they have been released at the same time. Hubble shows an old cold planet on the edge of a solar system, while Keck shows some very young hot infra-red emitting planets close to their star. The two discoveries help elucidate the workings of other solar systems - and each is just as valuable as the other.

Re:overshadowed?

Rest assured, these were strongly coordinated: both teams knew full well of each others results well in advance, both were scheduled for simultaneous release via Science at 2pm EDT today, and indeed, both papers share one co-author. (I work in the same group as another co-author of the HR8799 paper, so believe me that this is first-hand knowledge). The HST press conference was scheduled (well in advance) for shortly after the Science embargo expired.

Of course, this hasn't stopped both groups trying to spin up their results in a perfectly understandable fashion. The downside is that many online press stories are showing very signs of confusion as to what's what, not at all helped by the blizzard of parallel press releases from various institutions on the HR8799 3-planet system result.

Indeed, the Gemini Observatory release shows images taken with their telescope showing just two of the planets, presumably because they don't want to cede any ground to the Keck, their rivals on Mauna Kea, where the third planet was found. Again, potentially very confusing indeed to the public.

As for the complementary aspect of the two discoveries, that's mostly the case and both discoveries are very important. But it's not true to say that one's (Fomalhaut) an old planet seen in reflected visible light while the others (HR8799) are young and shining in their own heat: both stars are roughly equally young and the Fomalhaut planet seems also to be shining in some mix of its own heat even in the visible (it's at 400K, possibly), plus perhaps some additional reflected light from a dusty disk around the planet (as opposed to the obvious disk around the star itself).

Also, I wouldn't say the HR8799 planets are close to their star: nothing like. They're out at the equivalent of Neptune's orbit and beyond, even though the Fomalhaut planet's a bit further out still.

Hope this helps allay your (understandable) scepticism.

Re:Planets look like...

You have to see the orbital progression to get over the thought that it's just another speck of light noise. Here is a larger image showing the position of the planet from 2004 and 2006 [nasa.gov]. Also, here is the url for the release showing the image of HR 8799 with its 3 planets [lowell.edu].

Re:Planets look like...

So planets look a lot like noise.

If the "noise" obeys Kepler's laws, it's probably an image of something real.

Yes they do.

So planets look a lot like noise. They really aren't all that much different than the expected noise levels on the images. Especially on the first one from Fomalhaut.

From far enough away, yes. Yes they do. For example, here's Earth from just outside the solar system, and the basis for Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/601/PIA00452.tif [nasa.gov] (TIFF image)

That light blue pixel on the right is us. All of us. Taken from 6.4 billion kilometers away.

Deadpixel, indeed.

Re:Amazing

Taking pictures of them *is* news. In fact, that's the point of these releases. These are the first direct images ever released. Before this, all evidence was indirect (oscillating plots of star brightness as the planet periodically eclipsed the host star, for instance).

Re:Amazing

These are the first direct images ever released. Before this, all evidence was indirect (oscillating plots of star brightness as the planet periodically eclipsed the host star, for instance).

Well, except for HD 189733b [wikipedia.org], 2M1207 b [wikipedia.org] and GQ Lup b [space.com].

Re:Amazing

HD189733b: not directly imaged, but has had a temperature map of it reconstructed from very careful analysis of the change in the light from the parent star as the planet transits in front of and behind it.

2M1207b: this orbits a brown dwarf, not a star.

GQ Lup b: not a planet by any reasonable stretch of the scientific imagination, unless you happen to have been a co-author of the original paper. Believe me: this one is dead, Jim, and was known by most of us to be so on arrival.

Re:Amazing

Plus they might all go there to try and convert the heathens.

Mote in God's Eye

no, not Sauron. That is clearly the Mote in God's Eye.

Re:Wish I could discovery something

To "Discovery" something is easy: you just make a documentary about it that's too dumbed-down for people who like documentaries but still too boring for those who don't, and add lots of unnecessary and repetitive CG animation.

Atmosphere is in the spectrum

Wake me up when there's a pic of what the weather (atmosphere) looks like on an extrasolar planet.

What they have right now can give a pretty accurate idea of the atmosphere on that planet. Pass the light from that dot through a diffraction grating and the spectrum will tell you which gases are present in what proportion in the atmosphere, and what is their temperature.