Astronomers Find Three Exoplanets In Old Hubble Images 48
The Bad Astronomer writes "Using new software techniques on Hubble data from 1998, astronomers have teased out direct images of three planets orbiting the Sun-like star HR 8799, 130 light years away. These planets were discovered in 2008 using a different telescope, but had been sitting in the Hubble pictures this whole time, invisible due to their proximity to the bright star. Many other images of other stars are available, so it's entirely possible more planets will be found in this way."
Re:Easy to find when you know it is there. (Score:4, Informative)
I actually read the articles. Gasp! Turns out that new techniques allow for seeing the planets in the old data. ie, new data reduction/filtering methodologies improve the results coming out of the old pictures.
1) this allows for a second source for confirmation of any suspected planets
2) it allows for viewing orbits immediately across a multi-year span
3) the validation of the new techniques allows for all the Hubble data to be analyzed anew with potentially much different results than the first time around.
Think of this as looking at a drop of pond water with your eye, a magnifying glass, and then a series of pictures taken through the magnifying glass at different angles and putting together a 3-D representation of the drop in a computer.