Newly Discovered Planet Whipped by 5400mph Winds

Exoplanet HD189733b is just not habital!

One of the first to be discovered with water in it's

atmosphere, it soon became apparent that no one

would be living there in the foreseeable future.

The Exoplanet is known as a "hot Jupiter"  and at  63 light years, it is the closest planet of it's type to Earth. 

All of these features are indeed awe inspiring.  How there is another feature in the planet's makeup that is truly awe inspiring.   Exoplanet HD189733b is to have  observed  speeds of up to a massive 5,400 miles per hour, which is 20 times faster than anything that has been experienced on Earth.

Check out the NASA  article here for more info

3x Times closer Goldilocks Planet Discovered

 Astrophysicists recently revealed the discovery of a  rocky Earth-sized planet very close to Earth in size.  Dubbed GJ1132b, the planet is also a sizzler at 840 degrees  surface temp.

272 trillion miles  is one light year.  That makes the new planed ten thousand six hundred and eight trillion miles.  That puts the planet close in galactic terms (though incomprehensible in human terms)

GJ113392b is located 39 lightyears  away.  Even though it sounds far,  it is 3 times closer than the next closest planet in the goldilocks zone. 

NASA Discovers First Earth-sized Planet in Habital Zone

 

In a startling discovery, astronomer Thomas Barclay from Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Palo Alto, California 

• has discovered a habitable planet almost the same size as Earth orbiting an unidentified star in its so-called Goldilocks zone - a region around the star that emits just enough energy, light and temperature for liquid surface water to appear. 

The planet's data was captured by the Kepler space telescope.  The planet was observed indirectly while orbiting an unnamed M1 dwarf star better known as red dwarfs.   

From the article:

These are much smaller and dimmer than Earth’s sun, and aren’t bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. Also  these stars make up around 70 per cent of all the stars in the galaxy.Barclay made the discovery using data collected by the Kepler space telescope. The planet sits on the outer edge of its star's habitable zone.

Check out the complete facinating article Here

Heard of puffed rice, right? How about a "puffed" planet....

NASA's Kepler space telescope, to date, had discovered a whole slew of planets orbiting around other stars.  The most recent of which is likely to be one of the strangest.  Located 200 light-years away, planet KOI-314c orbits it's primary, a red dwarf star, in 23 days.  KOI-314c's mass however is very close to that of Earth's but the weird thing is the planet's atmosphere which makes the planet appear 60% larger than Earth. 

Since the orbital period is only 23 days, the planet's  atmosphere is about 220 degrees Fahrenheit, above the boiling point of water, which makes life as we know it moot. 

Discovery of Earth sized exo-planets are extremely difficult especially if they are close in to their primary.  Read the Discovery article HERE for the complete explanation of the method used.

Astronomers Discover Ultra-compact Solar System

Two different teams of astronomers have confirmed the existence of an ultra compact planetary system designated KIC 11442793 with the discovery of a seventh planet using data from the Kepler scope using the "transitional" method of planet discovery.  

The incredible fact about this system is that all seven planets are in a tight orbit that is closer than the Earth's distance to our Sun.

From the IO9 article:

• The newly discovered planet, which is 2.8 times the size of Earth, is the fifth out with an orbit of 125 days. 

Check out the Cornell University article here

Read the IO9 article HERE

Exoplanets Soar Past One Thousand!

Carole sends me an article from the National Geographic Daily News site that reports that the count of extra-solar planets has soared past one thousand!  

From the NG article:

• After just two decades of hunting, this symbolic milestone was surpassed with this week's announcement of the discovery of 11 new worlds by the British Wide Angle Search for Planets  detection program.

This of course does not take into account planets that have as yet not been confirmed, which may count in the thousands and of course the billions that must exist in the Milky Way already.  

Detection of extra-solar planets has soared due to indirect detection methods.   Methods now count on how a distant star may flicker as a planet passes in front of it, or the more common wobble a star may have as planets influence their orbit. 

Check out the article here for more info

Planet Photographed 300 LY from Earth

First, lets do the math light travels at 186000 miles a second, times 60 for a minute and 60 again for an hour.  Now 24 for 1 day and 365 day and we find that a light year is almost 6 trillion miles.   So when it was reported that the European Southern Observatory had taken a photo of a planet 300 light years, we should all be gasping in awe!  News articles really marginalize the stupendous distances involved because 300 light years is about 17000 trillion miles and it was a planet not the parent star!  I mean, it has got to be like someone in Boston taking a picture of an ant on top of the Seattle spire!  I had trouble with 3 light years....300! Someone check the math...I may even have dropped a zero or two....

The Space.com article points out also that even though it is a gas giant, it is the smallest planet photoed outside our Solar System.   The planet in question is named called HD 95086 b  orbiting as you might expect HD 95086.   The picture was taken in infrared light which allowed the planet to be seen easier.  

This pic here has the parent star removed so the planet shines out as a brilliant blue dot at the bottom of the photo to the right.

 Astronomers estimate that the exo-planet to be only 4 or 5 times larger than Jupiter.    One thing did help in photographing the planet.  It orbits the central sun at twice the distance of Neptune's orbit.   The top photo has a ring noting Neptune's orbit.

Thanks to Carole for the initial heads up.  Here is the link to the Space.com article

Extra-Solar Planet

Astronomers have confirmed that the extra-solar planet called Fomalhaut b is indeed exist!

When it was first observed, Fomalhaut b, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, caused a great deal of controversy. The first pictures taken of the planet could not be reproduced because of a broken module on the Hubble. Second, the orbit was so oblique that there were questions as to it being a proper planet, leading astronomers to label it a "rogue" planet.

On of the things that makes Fomalhaut b worthy of interest it was one of the first directly imaged extrasolar planets ever seen.

After it's discovery in 2004 it was not seen again until 2010, with a new instrument, by 2012 several other telescopes had managed to photograph Fomalhaut b and finally in 2013 the original team again photographed the planet in the star's huge debris ring.

The reason that the planet was so difficult to find was it;s hugely oblique orbit, anywhere from 40 A.U. to a staggering 350 A.U.s. acting much more like a comet from our own solar system’s outer Kuiper belt. Check out the picture above and the demonstration below.

Looking For Exo - Civilizations

In this recent Daily Galaxy article I found a really novel approach for looking for life or more to the fact, thriving high tech civilizations on other planets.   In the past astronomers have looked for alien civilizations by listening for radio signals or looking for ultra-short laser pulses.   Now in the past it was not uncommon to listen in the communications bands as well hoping that we literally "listen in" for  extraterrestrial intelligence.  The problem in that approach is that like us it is not unreasonable to expect that many of these signals would be shielded or better focused and in cable for television and phone, therefor making such signals almost impossible to detect.

Now astronomers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Princeton University have suggested a novel idea for detecting alien societies - urban lights.

It is a beautifully simple idea and it is played out every 90 minutes or so aboard the ISS.   It is a very striking sight to see the lights of the big cities glowing on the night side of Earth.   A truly vigorous society on another planet would almost certainly have bright cities at night.   No matter what wavelength these lifeforms would see in, artificial lighting is all but a given in a city environment.   The astronomers are of the mindset that the total change in light levels  from a planet with city lighting will vary in a way that is measurably different from a planet that has no artificial lights.

It really is a brilliant and brilliantly simple idea.  Read the complete Daily Galaxy blog article here.

Exoplanet's Moons Might Be the Best Bet For Finding Life

Habitable moons....somehow the thought is attractive. I am reading an article on IO9 that makes a good argument for finding extra-solar forms of life be found on habitable moons. This is how the numbers stack up.  Scientist have presently discovered 716 exo-planets, the problem being that to contain life they must be positioned in the narrow "life" zone that supports liquid water and most of the discovered worlds are gas giants, in to close to their primary and therefor way too hot.  But there are over a hundred planets discover that ARE in the habitable zone. But in a cruel twist, most of these are also gas giants.

Scientists have started to speculate about the moons that may well circle these gas giants.  Since they too would be in the habitable zone they could be a very real possibility.   None of course have been discovered to this date, but that is hardly a surprise.  Just finding the planets themselves is a daunting procedure,  uncovering exo-moons is much more so.

Right now with the present detection capabilities of the most powerful telescopes and space based platforms can not detect a moon much  smaller than 1.3 times the size of Earth.  That is a very real area of concern.  Many of the moons we consider good candidates for life in our own solar system fall well below that mark.

Read the complete IO9 article that describes the difficulty of detecting these small worlds.  HERE

Another good reference article here in Centauri Dreams

Kepler mission confirms the discovery of first rocky planet

NASA Ames researchers have released some really interesting news. The team has confirmed the existence of a rocky planet. The FIRST rocky planet outside our solar system. The planet is designated Kepler-10b. At about 1 1/2 times bigger than Earth it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

Kepler-10b's sun resides in the Cygnus constellation about 560 light-years distant. The planet is truly an unusual discovery. Up to this point the planets being discovered had for the most part been gas giants many time the size of Earth. Even so, it could not support life. It orbits several times closer to its parent star than our planet Mercury. That makes the surface temperature hotter than a lava flow on Earth. Kepler-10b is so close in its orbit that its parent sun's magnetic field has stripped it of any atmosphere.

Below is some NASA animation of Kepler-10b and go here for the complete NASA article.





Thanks to Dan for the original post

New Tech Finds Undiscovered Extra-Solar Planets

From Science Daily I read that scientist /astronomers have developed new equipment and methods of detecting exo-planets that heretofore were hidden by the glare of the parent star.

From the article:

• Using new optics technology developed at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, astronomers has obtained images of a planet on a much closer orbit around its parent star than any other extrasolar planet previously found.

Installed on a telescope, atop Paranal Mountain in Chile, the new technology enables astronomers to confirm the existence of a planet about seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, around its parent star, Beta Pictoris, 63 light years away. The system cosists of a small, patterned piece of glass. The device blocks out the starlight in a very defined way, allowing planets to show up that were previously drowned out by the star's glare.

Up to this point most extra-solar planets were discovered by the slight gravitational wobble a planet induces in its parent star, very few of them have been directly observed. This new device will not only confirm the existence of suspected planets but also uncover many more and ones much closer to their sun.

Youngest Solar Systems Detected by Astronomers

Astronomers at the University of Michigan have found what are believed to be some of the youngest solar systems yet detected.

The systems are around the young stars UX Tau A and LkCa 15, located in the Taurus star formation region just 450 light years away. Using a telescope that measures levels of infrared radiation, the researchers noticed gaps in the protoplanetary disks of gas and dust surrounding these stars. They say those gaps are most likely caused by infant planets sweeping those areas clear of debris.

A paper on the findings by astronomy doctoral student Catherine Espaillat, professor Nuria Calvet, and their colleagues is published in the Dec. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.