Ultra-Sensitive Camera To Measure Exoplanet Sizes 62
Roland Piquepaille writes "US astronomers and engineers have built a new camera to precisely measure the size of planets moving around distant stars. This camera has been dubbed OPTIC — short for 'Orthogonal Parallel Transfer Imaging Camera.' According to the research team, it is 'so sensitive that it could detect the passage of a moth in front of a lit window from a distance of 1,000 miles.' I'm not sure if this analogy is right, but the team said it was able to precisely define the size of a planet called WASP-10b which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Can it precisely define the size of Uranus?
<sigh> Poor Uranus. People who can't pronounce your name correctly are constantly making butt jokes about you, whereas those who can pronounce your name correctly are constantly making pee jokes about you...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I have a fanboi, following me around and modding my posts down. He might have started off as an Anonymous Coward making comments, but that was making him look bad so he's retreated to truly anonymous moderating. Isn't anonymity just a wonderful precious thing?
Re: (Score:2)
If the best you can do is to repeat that tired old joke about Uranus (which isn't even pronounced "your anus", the correct pronunciation according to all the dictionaries I've seen is YOO-ran-us) you should expect more negative karma.
Re: (Score:2)
If that's the most cogent criticism you can muster, why waste the keystrokes?
If you weren't so hellbent on being a sourpuss at the moment, you would concede that sometimes it's the tired old, obvious, see-it-coming-a-mile-away jokes that are perversely the funniest. It's not often the case for me, but it does happen, and it happens often enough even for me while reading Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
And on slashdot, the whole point of jokes is to repeat them until they stop being funny, then twist them (or just repeat them at the right time) so that they become funny again, so stop being so po-faced and literal.
Re: (Score:2)
Given the Greek etymology, we're all wrong anyhow :)
Ouranos == the sky
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not so petty that I feel compelled to mod-down anyone else's good-natured attempts at humor; the only time I make exception to that is when it's clear the humor has malicious intent. Why do you or anyone else feel that compulsion? If it merely doesn't make you laugh, why not just keep your mouth shut and your fingers off the mod button? Clearly the intent is not to improve the quality of others' humor but to belittle it in a way that makes the perpetrator feel somehow superior or less inferior. That
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Can it precisely define the size of Uranus?
Yes. The diameter of Uranus is 1.65662 +/- 0.00025 nanogoatsecs -- parsecs! I meant nanoparsecs. Sorry.
Split infinitives are perfectly legal (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, in American English [nytimes.com] as well.
And if they are used to change the emphasis in a phrase, they often are very useful too. They can even allow for improved clarity.
So just stop to stupidly impose latin grammar rules and conventions on another language.
By the way: Ending sentences with prepositions [trinicenter.com] is generally OK as well.
Re:Split infinitives are perfectly legal (Score:5, Insightful)
And dear Grammar Nazis, take note that the object of language is communication. Shakespeare (perchance, fairly highly regarded for his vocabulary and poetry) made up new words and rules all the time. It's fun being creative with words.
If the grammar, spelling or sentence structure makes a passage unintelligible, then it's sometimes fine to point that out. Otherwise... shut the fuck up. Go bully people on Wikipedia like you normally do -- there you'll be very welcome.
Re: (Score:1)
Otherwise... shut the fuck up.
Or, you could just ask them to fuckingly shut up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, Roland did make a mistake...
On the last line it reads:
I'm not sure if this analogy is right, but the team said it was able to precisely define the size of a planet called WASP-10b which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth."
He needs a comma "," after the "WASP-10b" in order to make the usage of "which" correct. If there's no comma in that context he needs to use "that" instead of "which." It's a common mistake. Actually, he'd be better off braking that sentence
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, he'd be better off braking that sentence in two with the diction he chose
Really, I don't think his sentence was too precipitous, so braking seems unnecessary.
Might have been a good idea to use two sentences instead of one though.
Re: (Score:1)
It's never going to be possible to completely rid the Internet of Grammar Nazis---they're something we're just going to have to put up with.
But we can be passive-aggressive like hell.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But we can be passive-aggressive like hell.
Avoid the passive voice.
Almost! (Score:1)
Almost got me, there, Roland.
Astronomy.com Linky [astronomy.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Almost got me, there, Roland. Astronomy.com Linky
Why is that article better than the one directly from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy link where the research was conducted?
Roland stopped linking to his own page a long time ago, so I don't really get why there's any hatred left. I actually never really got why there was any hate to begin with, but now there's really no excuse.
Re: (Score:2)
No, he didn't. His name links to his own plagiarism blog. He's still using Slashdot to accrete pagerank and views for his plagiarism. All he stopped doing was linking to his plagiarism in the submission text.
It's clever but still borderline scummy IMHO.
-Isaac
Re: (Score:2)
He's still using Slashdot to accrete pagerank
No. It's a ref="nofollow" link, it's not adding pagerank. As for views... slashdot's owners want to offer submitters those views to encourage good submissions, so why in the world should you object?
doesn't sound very impressive (Score:3, Interesting)
It measures light to a precision of one part in 2,000
So that's 11 bits of intensity information? Most professional camera CCD's are 12 bits per color. Some are 14 bits per color. Doesn't sound very impressive. And with multiple exposures, it should be possible to get a much higher resolution.
The photometric precision is three to four times higher than that of typical CCDs and two to three times higher than the best CCDs, and comparable to the most recent results from the Hubble Space Telescope for stars of the same brightness.
Hmmm, still doesn't sound too impressive. What do they mean by 'typical CCD' anyway?
In any case, it's not more sensitive than the Hubble apparently, so it's probably not going to make any breakthrough discoveries.
Nice, but not news.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In any case, it's not more sensitive than the Hubble apparently, so it's probably not going to make any breakthrough discoveries.
Nowadays the quality of images is better from earth than from the HST. Although there is the atmosphere, on places with extremely low humidity like Mauna Kea large telescopes can be built. The HST is quite a small telescope, and with corrections of the atmosphere (like adaptive optics, lucky imaging, ...) the result is better from earth.
Other than that, I believe the scientists there when they say, they improved the precision by a factor of 2-3.
Re: (Score:2)
The 2.2-meter telescope they're using is slightly smaller than the HST. My guess: the real advantage is that they can devote more of this telescope's time to exoplanet studies than can the HST, which has many more users.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
What's news isn't the technical specs of the new camera but the application for which it was developed and its effectiveness in that application. Do you know any other cameras that can precisely measure planet-sized objects 300 light years away?
Re:doesn't sound very impressive (Score:4, Informative)
It measures light to a precision of one part in 2,000
So that's 11 bits of intensity information? Most professional camera CCD's are 12 bits per color. Some are 14 bits per color. Doesn't sound very impressive. And with multiple exposures, it should be possible to get a much higher resolution.
14 bits is all nice and good if your light source is the local star and you can saturate your CCD within milliseconds.
We're measuring starlight here, at maybe 10 orders of magnitude less light. Try getting 14-bit resolution at that level without drowning in noise.
Re: (Score:1)
Won't work (Score:2)
Not So Fast..... (Score:2)
Pics or it didn't happen.....
Re: (Score:2)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-9F5OEn6_U4/SFarQmNhngI/AAAAAAAAAK4/zz1sisUD4CY/s1600-h/IMG_0328.JPG
Re: (Score:2)
HAHAHA!
I stand corrected.
Re: (Score:1)
Dude! Is that Mothra attacking your house?!
WASP? (Score:4, Funny)
the team said it was able to precisely define the size of a planet called WASP-10b which is orbiting around the star WASP-10, about 300 light-years from Earth.
Next up for the team? Precisely measure planets around stars SPIC-20, CHINK-15, and GRINGO-117.
Equivalent of a moth at 300ly? (Score:3, Interesting)
(300 light years / 1000 miles) * 2 inches [google.com] == 89 588 337.2 kilometers
So (assuming an average moth is about 2 inches in size) it could make out a planet of about 90 million km (some 64 times wider than Sol) in diameter in front of a star that's 300 light years away, right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad interpretation. They are taking about change in intensity of light.
A moth flying in front of a window.
A window is say 3'x4' = 12 sq ft = 1728 sq in.
Moth is 2" wide, 1" tall triangle = 1 sq in.
change in intensity = 1/1728 = .06%
If the star is size of sun, size of planet .24/100 * 1.4e6 km = 3367 km
= sqrt(.06%)
= 0.24% in diameter compared to star
=
A couple corrections (from someone involved*) (Score:3, Informative)
OPTIC is not exactly a new camera, nor was it purpose-built for this. It's about four years old, and was the prototype camera for John Tonry's OTCCD (Orthogonal Transfer CCD) chips, which are now better known as the chips inside Pan-STARRS' gigapixel camera, I think. The OTCCDs have some in-chip guiding capabilities, which are kinda neat. If I recall, OPTIC spends half the year at (but not always on) the UH 2.2-meter (where I'm an operator) and half the year at WIYN.
Because OPTIC works somewhat differently than our other cameras, it doesn't exactly have a whole lot of users. John Johnson came up with the idea of using it to do light curves of transiting planets, and it turned out to work pretty well, to the point that he and his collaborators (including a couple summer REU students from the mainland) were able to get the first full-transit light curves of some particular planets.
(*involved as in, I was operating the scope that night in August and got to see those light curves in "real time." Fortunately, being thanked at the end of a scientific paper preprint earns me geek cred with my 9-year-old. ;)
1 part in 2000... (Score:2)