32 Exoplanets Discovered By Chilean Telescope 146
the4thdimension writes "An article on CNN notes that 32 exoplanets have been discovered using a new Chilean telescope. The telescope is capable of detecting movements of 2.1mph (comparable to a slow walking pace). These 32 new planets give the telescope a total of 75 planets it has discovered, out of the 400 discovered using all methods employed by astronomers. This places the HARPS system as the world's foremost exoplanet hunter."
link to ESO Press Release (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the "new Chilenean telescope" the summary is referring to is actually the 3.6m telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, which started operation in 1976...
and here is the link to the ESO Press Release [eso.org]
Re:39 days to Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
While that's out of the question, an unmanned nuke-powered probe could possibly survey such a system in one life-time if sufficiently funded.
ESO Press Release (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ESO Press Release (Score:2, Informative)
More details can be found in the Press Release [eso.org] of the European Southern Observatory. They have been using a new instrument called HARPS on the "old" ESO 3.6m telescope, which has ben around since 1976.
And HARPS [wikipedia.org] has been operational since 2003.
!Chilean (Score:5, Informative)
This is a telescope operating in Chile, it is only partially funded by the Chileans.
Funded by
Also news from (Score:4, Informative)
---
Extra Solar Planets [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Re:Stars to Planet Ratio (Score:5, Informative)
Right now the ratio between stars to planets in the milky way is about 1 billion to 1.
That's a ridiculous statistic. By that measure, the ratio between Diet Coke drinkers and humans is 3.5 billion to 1, because my wife and I are the only people in my group of friends who drink the stuff, and there are 7 billion people on the planet.
And yet somehow the Coca Cola company keeps making it, just for us...
A better statistic is the ratio of the number of planets discovered and the NUMBER OF STARS SEARCHED FOR PLANETS. As of 2003, this fraction was at least 10%, and given observational limits may prove to be as high as 100% -- it could well be that ALL sunlike stars have planets.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306524 [arxiv.org]
Re:Ridiculous claim (Score:5, Informative)
They're not measuring the side-to-side motion of the stars, that's impossible^H^H^H^Hvery difficult to measure, as your trig suggests.
They're measuring the Doppler shift of features in the star's optical spectrum, as it moves toward us and away. It's the world's most impressive police radar gun.
Errata (Score:1, Informative)
"An article on CNN describes that 32 exoplanets have been discovered using a new Chilean telescope. The telescope is capable of detecting movement 2.1mph (comparable to a slow walking pace)."
ESO=European Southern Observatory (Score:2, Informative)
Not "Space Organization." It's not directly related to the European Space Agency.
Re:link to ESO Press Release (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3.5km/h (Score:3, Informative)
I was reading the summary thinking "surely a telescope's sensitivity should be measured in arcseconds, and the minimum detectable speed should be in arcseconds-per-second rather than miles per hour." Of course they were talking about bodies moving toward and away from us, rather than across our field of vision, so it's a Doppler effect measurement rather than looking at a picture and saying, "hey! That bit moved!"
I've just had my big mug of coffee, but obviously it hasn't reached my brain yet :)