First Four-Exoplanet System Imaged 89
Phoghat writes "Among the first exoplanet systems imaged was HR 8799. In 2008, a team led by Christian Marois at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada took a picture of the system, directly imaging three giant planets."
I got in before the Slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)
For those who were not able to get in before the Slashdotting, here is a picture in text
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Re:I got in before the Slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)
A better link: Herzberg Institute directly (Score:5, Informative)
I hope this doesn't cause a slashdotting of the Herzberg Institute, but...
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/news/nrc/2010/12/08/exoplanet-marois.html [nrc-cnrc.gc.ca]
Re:Quite strange. (Score:5, Informative)
Trust is not so important as being reproducible and verified by multiple methods. There's no explicit reason to distrust "doppler shifts, wobbles and loss of brightness due to osculation" but it's good science to say "Well, if what we're measuring is the result of a planet, we should be able to do X and see the planet directly. If we don't, there's something wrong. That it has been correct for near star systems give credibility to the other methods that they'll be correct for distant star systems. Sometimes you have to accept single-source results because it's the world's largest and most sensitive telescope or most powerful particle accelerator or things like that, but it's not ideal to leave it at that. Verifying results is a lot less glorious than making the discoveries in the first place, but it's an important part of science.
No. (Score:4, Informative)
The subject is system. System is singular, "system is" correct.
Re:Quite strange. (Score:3, Informative)
When Galileo invented the telescope,
More like re-invented.
Ecclesiastes 1:9