Voyager Has Left the Building....

Kall asked the question in last week's RUNDOWN segment, where exactly IS Voyager?

Well now, according to Reuters, new research indicates that the craft left the confines of the Solar System last year.  Making it the first man made object to do so.  

This new research is based on conclusions by physicist Marc Swisdak of  the University of Maryland.  Up until this point, scientists have based Voyager's position to magnetic fields.  These fields, according to computer models, will flow away from the sun as long as Voyager is in the Solar System. These fields should stop and the flow then should come from the interstellar medium and flow towards the solar system.  

However Swisdak's findings suggest that Solar System magnetic flows and interstellar's flow are aligned enough that "you can actually pass through without seeing a huge change in direction,"

If this is indeed the case then Voyager's position can only be based upon the amount of particles from Sol or cosmic rays flowing toward the Solar System from the interstellar medium.  This very scenario occurred with Voyager last year, hence the conclusion by Swisdak that Voyager has indeed left the Solar System and did so last year when Voyager detected a sharp drop in particles from Sol and   a corresponding increase in particle influx toward the Solar System. 

From the article:

• Voyager lead scientist Edward Stone, now retired from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said Swisdak's research is interesting but different computer models are portraying different scenarios to explain the Voyager data.

Read complete Reuters article HERE

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.

Smallest Exoplanet Discovered

ESA Space Science reports that COROT has discovered the smallest ever estra-solar planet.
From the article:

• COROT-Exo-7b, is different: its diameter is less than twice that of Earth and it orbits its star once every 20 hours, and has a high (surface) temperature, between 1000 and 1500°C.

The composition of the planet is still is still under investigation.

• It may be rocky like Earth and covered in liquid lava. It may also belong to a class of planets that are thought to be made up of water and rock in almost equal amounts. Given the high temperatures measured, the planet would be a very hot and humid place.

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Hubble Directly Observes a Planet Orbiting Another Star

Dave Tackett of Quasar Dragon blog sends in a note of a truly startling first from the venerable Hubble space telescope. For the first time ever, we now have a picture of an extra-solar planet orbiting is parent sun! Nasa estimates the planet to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b. The planet orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish." The star first attracted interest in 2004 when Hubble first photographed the star noting an unusual dust ring around the star. This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto. Astronomers at the University of California at Berkeley, proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge. Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

Pic of planet around another star

From ScienceDaily: University of Toronto astronomers have posted what could possibly be the first planetary mass type object orbiting a star similar to Sol. The star, which is about 500 ly distant, is very similar to Sol but is much younger. The companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star. ( By comparison Neptune, our most distant planet, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.) At this early stage, they hesitate to call it a planet, because they are not sure the object is in orbit around the star. However they have determined that it is the same basic distance from Earth as the star. Also spectra shows that it is much to cold to be another star or even a brown dwarf. It will take another couple of years of study to difinitivly prove that the planet and the star are indeed companions, but the proof is already compelling.

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(Credit: Image courtesy of Gemini Observatory)

The 3 Bears effect on our Solar System

As Goldilocks, and now a new computer study, found out - certain things have to be just right. For our lady in curls, it was the oatmeal, chairs and beds, but for our solar system, far from being average, events had to fall into place just right for it to form the way it did. Leading ultimately to our arrival on the scene.

In an article in Science Daily, astronomers from Northwestern University are the first to run computer simulation of solar system formation, from beginning to end, starting with the generic disk of gas and dust that is left behind after the formation of the central star and ending with a full planetary system.

Recently published in the journal Science, their study showed that the average solar system's genesis was filled with as they put it a great deal of "violence and drama", but that the formation of something like our solar system required conditions to be "just right."

The first extra solar systems discovered didn't look at all like our Solar System. The orbits were elongated and planets were not where they were expected to be. The simulation suggests that the early proto planets interacted more than was initially thought, fighting as it were for resources, being pushed relentlessly toward the central star and also reacting with each other to force some into the central mass or slingshoting others our of the system all together.

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(Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Large ‘Planet X’ may lurk beyond Pluto

Shaun Saunders sends in another good article from MSNBC. According to a new computer model created by team members from Kobe University in Japan: An unknown world might lurk in the distant reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto. A planet much larger than Pluto, possibly as much a 70% the mass of Earth, and could be responsible for some unusual features of the Kuiper Belt.

Ok, I know, hardly new idea! A "planet X" has been the grist for many a science fiction writer, fired the imagination of fans for ages and been the bane for many astro-scientists. And of course now since the International Astronomical Union adopted a new definition recently, it would instead be the largest known "plutoid."

But all kidding aside, according to the article : The Kuiper Belt contains many peculiar features that can't be explained by standard solar system models. One is the highly irregular orbits of some of the belt's members. Some of the largest and most distant bodies in the Kupier belt, have orbits that are so unusual that it is very easy to speculate that a very massive object is responsible. The team members released their in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal.

Shaun speculates that the situation may be a little more complicated than what is described in the article - there could be a brown dwarf solar twin much further out, with its own planets occasionally coming in closer...

I myself have harbored the notion that Earth's Sol could very well have a brown dwarf as a companion and that Sol was part of a binary pair. If we want to speculate further, Sol might have a singularity as a companion.

Truly we have only just scratched the surface so to speak of the outer reaches of the solar system. Mysteries still abound, and hence - science fiction will continue to have a healthy plot device!

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Tiniest extrasolar planet found

Astronomers have sighted the smallest extrasolar planet yet orbiting a normal star just three times the size of our own. The planet orbits a star which is itself of such low mass it may in fact be a "failed star", or brown dwarf. The planet, called MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, is about 3.3 times the size of Earth. Astronomers found the new world using a technique called gravitational microlensing. This takes advantage of the fact that light is bent as the rays pass close to a massive object, like a star. Discoveries like this bring astronomers closer to discovering micro-planets, around the mass of the Earth, which might harbor life.

Thanks to Shaun Saunders for the article from BBC News

Planets in nearby solar system may have collided

Shaun Saunders sends in an article, from Space.com, that reports on a study that suggests that 2 planets may have collided in a nearby solar system.

An extrasolar planet about one-fourth the heft of Jupiter might have formed from the collision and merger of two planets. Known as 2M1207B, the object orbits a brown-dwarf star called 2M1207A located 170 light-years from Earth and seen in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers have discovered that this object does not fall into standard models of planetary objects. Its temperature, age and brightness don't match up with what astrophysical theory would predict. Researchers have debated since 2004 on whether it's a planet or perhaps a brown dwarf. Previously the object was thought to mass about 5 Jupiters. However, new observations suggest the mass that of half that of Jupiter. If the new model is correct, it would mean 2M1207B formed in a similar fashion to a planet. It would also means that a 2004 picture of the object would go down in history as the first photo of a planet outside our solar system.

Read complete article here

Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet

European astronomers have spotted what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet outside our solar system, with balmy temperatures that could support water and, potentially, life. They have not directly seen the planet, orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581. But measurements of the star suggest that a planet not much larger than the Earth is pulling on it. It appears to have a mass five times that of Earth's. The researchers suggest that its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky, like our Earth, or covered with oceans. Most of the 200 or so planets that have been spotted outside this solar system have been gas giants like Jupiter. But this one is small, with a radius that should be only 1.5 times the Earth's.