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Space Science

Photo of First Extra-Solar Planet? 30

Posted by chrisd from the scoping-future-homes-for-cmdrtaco dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to NASA 'A major discovery from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope about a planet outside our Solar System will be announced in a Space Science Update on 27 November. The discovery marks an important new capability in efforts to uncover secrets about these newly discovered extrasolar planets.' Given the names of the individuals listed as speakers at this event, plus previous press releases and published papers, it is likely that the topic of discussion will focus upon planet(s) circling the sunlike star HD 209458."
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Photo of First Extra-Solar Planet? More

Photo of First Extra-Solar Planet?

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  • Photo of First Extra-Solar Planet?

    No. It's a series of photos showing a star getting 2% dimmer as a planet passes between it and us.

    Nothing to get excited about unless you're an astro-physicist.
    • That would prove that it is a planet. There is also a new technique that uses the light of the star, to access the chemistry of a planet's atmosphere. This would be a most effective use for the Hubble Space telescope which is free of earth's atmospheric mess. With the spectrographic technique the Cassini space craft was able to prove that Earth has life. This is the same technique they want to try with extrasolar planets.
      • the Cassini space craft was able to prove that Earth has life

        Didn't we know that the Earth had life already? I could've sworn I saw a squirrel the other day.
        • Yes, but what it proved was that the technique of detecting life worked. If you detect another world with similiar lifesigns, you can assume that carbon/water based life exists there.

          • No, it didn't. (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Haeleth ( 414428 )
            A test that succeeds on a sample of precisely one is hardly proven to work. If I find a three-legged cat, I can't claim that any three-legged animal is a cat, or that all cats have three legs. Similarly, if similar signs are found on another world, that doesn't necessarily mean that life exists there - nor does their absence prove that it doesn't.

            Although I will concede that finding similar signs would indicate a possibility of life...
      • That would prove that it is a planet.

        Or a massive alien invasion force from HD 209458...

        • No it wouldn't. Because a massive invasion force wouldn't have an atmosphere. They would be in a ship, or a fleet of ships.
          • No it wouldn't. Because a massive invasion force wouldn't have an atmosphere. They would be in a ship, or a fleet of ships.

            Or a fleet of ships so massive that it pulls its own cloud of gasses behind it (from the exhaust trails).

            Sure, it's most likely a planet, but you never know when that herd of horses you hear galloping over the next hill might be zebras. :) Such is the nature of probability...

      • Congratulations on being right!

        Hey, everybody. Mod this guy up!

      • They did indeed "access the chemistry of a planet's atmosphere."

        Did you hear a little inside information before you made that post? ;-)
        • Um, no actually, how I found that out was in a BBC documentary series called The Planets. They had an episode on extrasolar planet detection, and two french scientists had found a way to access the chemistry of a planet by using the light of the star. At the time I thought it may be hard to do with the atmosphere there, and when I heard this, I figured what else could it be? Hubble wouldn't be capable of taking a direct photo of it, but is very good a spectroscopy.
    • I am an astrophysicist, and damned, I am excited!

      *duck*

  • Planets found != life found (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yazeran ( 313637 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @03:47AM (#2618211)
    While it is nice to see that the Doppler-shift methods of inferring the existence planets around other stars being verified by an other indirect observation this is not the same as to say that other earth like planets exists out there.

    The planets found so far are all in Jupiter's mass-class and all of them are in close orbits around the parent star. This makes it more likely that they are 'dud'-stars in a double star system, where one of the members did not attract enough mass to start thermonuclear reactions.

    The techniques used to detect these giant planets in close orbit would at present not be able to detect the earth over interstellar instances. Likely not even Jupiter would be detected. This is good news, as there could be literally thousands of earth like planets within 100 light years, as we would be unable to detect them.

    To be able to see earth like planets at earth like distances from their parent star, would require a much more advanced telescope than Hubble. The ideal place for this telescope would be on the far side of the moon, which could shield it from visible as well as infrared light from earth and the sun (50 % of the time). As the moon is also geologically very quiet compared to earth better performance would be achieved. This is further augmented by the lower moon gravity which would make it possible to produce stable telescopes with a mirror-diameter larger than 6 meters, which seems to be the maximum here on earth for one-piece mirrors.


    Well enough said about this. Applaud to NASA for doing something worthwhile.


    Yours Yazeran


    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

  • s/b: First Photo of Extra-Solar Planet?

    Obviously if the Universe is on the order of 13B years old, the "first extra-solar planet" had long since been absorbed by the expansion of its star, then likely collapsed with the star into a brown dwarf.
    • Since we're nitpicking, it all depends on how we're ordering the planets, i.e. what we mean by "first". If you assume that we're ordering by creation date, then of course you're right. But if we order by date detected by humans, this would in fact be "the first extra-solar planet".

      This might even in fact be more reasonable, since it is in fact impossible to well-order events in time without referring to their distance from the observer. By your scheme, the "first extra-solar planet" is not even well-defined.

  • This headline and the linked photo are so completely absurd. Current telescopes still lack the power to resolve a star into anything more than a single point, let alone to a full size sphere which is capable of being eclipsed by a planet. Nowhere does the article mention anything about a photo. The picture in it is merely used to illustrate the concept of a planet.

  • Here's the Scoop (Score:2, Informative)

    by Sandlund ( 226344 )
    http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011127/ts/space_ planet_atmosphere_dc_2.html

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