Does Famous Exoplanet 'Fomalhaut b' Really Exist? 40
astroengine writes "The first exoplanet ever to be directly imaged by the Hubble space telescope may not exist. In 2008, the world was in awe of the famous 'Eye of Sauron' image of the star Fomalhaut's dusty ring — plus a slowly moving object that was identified as Fomalhaut b, a gas giant world approximately three times the mass of Jupiter. However, due to a strange orbital misstep detected between 2008 and 2009 photographs, the validity of Fomalhaut b's detection is being questioned, generating some controversy in the exoplanet community."
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Informative)
The further out the planet, and the bigger the star all factor into increasing the orbit time, so considering this planet is 3x the size of our biggest one (Jupiter) and that has an orbit of about 11 years (the size of Jupiter has nothing to do w/ orbit mostly), it might be a while before we can confirm this, possibly even a century.