Extrasolar Planets Archives

May 4, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Creating the Conditions Inside Supergiant Planets

We won’t be visiting a supergiant planet any time soon. But physicists are about to do the next best thing, and creat the conditions that exist inside the most dense planets right here on Earth. What used to require a nuclear explosion should now be possible with diamond anvils and powerful lasers.

Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), New Mexico State University and France’s Atomic Energy Commission announced this week that they have achieved pressures of 10 million atmospheres using a 30 kilojoule ultraviolet laser. The next step will be to use a 2 megajoule laser to achieve more than a billion atmospheres of pressure. Just for comparison, the centre of the Earth squeezes with a little less than 4 to 5 million atmospheres, and the centre of Jupiter is 70 million atmospheres.

Half of the apparatus uses diamond anvils, which can squeeze liquids and solids under high pressures. The researchers then blast the material with a laser-induced shock wave, and compressing it even more. Of course, you need a laser the size of a building, and half the diamond anvil is vapourized.

Once they reached pressures this high, scientists are discovering entirely new realms of chemistry. The just need to work quickly. The high pressure is only maintained for 1 or 2 nanoseconds.

Original Source: UC Berkeley News Release

May 3, 2007March 3, 2023 by Fraser Cain

Super-Massive Planet Discovered

It’s been a week of planetary discoveries. Here’s another. This latest find announced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is the most massive planet ever discovered. This gas giant, named HAT-P-2b, weighs in at 8 times the mass of Jupiter.

HAT-P-2b was discovered using the transit method. In other words, it was discovered because it dims the light from its parent star as it passes in front. Astronomers have calculated that it has a very unusual elliptical orbit, getting as close as 5 million km (3.1 million miles) and then swinging out to 15 million km (9.6 million miles). But this journey only takes 5.63 days.

As planets go, this is a strange one. It has 8.2 times the mass of Jupiter, but it’s only 1.18 times the size of Jupiter. It has roughly the density of the Earth, but it’s made up almost entirely of hydrogen. In fact, it’s right at the boundary between planet and star. With only another 50% more mass, it would have begun nuclear fusion.

The discovery was made using a network of small, automated telescopes called HATNet. There are a total of six telescopes; four at the Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and two more in Hawaii. These robotic telescopes make 26,000 observations every night, searching for stars that dip in brightness on a regular basis.

Original Source: CfA News Release

May 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

COROT Turns Up its First Planet

The European Space Agency’s COROT planet hunting observatory turned up its first planet – a hot Jupiter – surprising its managers at how quickly it would yield scientific results. COROT was launched in December, 2006, and it has only been making scientific observations for 60 days when it found a planet.

COROT discovers planets using the transit technique. It measures the total light emitted by a star very carefully, watching for a slight dip as a planet passes in front. Once several of these dips have been observed, the planet’s size and orbital period can be calculated.

This newly discovered planet, now named COROT-Exo-1b, is a very hot gas giant, with roughly 1.78 times the mass of Jupiter. But unlike Jupiter, it orbits its parent star every 1.5 days. The planet is located about 1500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros.

Now that it’s in orbit, scientists are getting a better sense of COROT’s capabilities, and the news is really good. The recent observations show that it’s much more sensitive than they had expected. Planets as small as the Earth should be detectable. And here’s the great news, COROT should be able to detect the chemical composition of the planets’ atmospheres. In other words, COROT will be able to detect the presence of oxygen and other signatures for life on Earth-sized worlds surrounding other stars.

The discovery of life on another planet may just be around the corner.

Original Source: ESA News Release

May 1, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Podcast: Discovering Another Earth

What a week! Astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting the nearby star Gliese 581. We talk about the technique used to discover the planet, the possibilities of finding even smaller planets, and what the future holds for finding another Earth.

Click here to download the episode

Discovering Another Earth – Show notes and transcript

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

April 25, 2007March 24, 2012 by Fraser Cain

Cooler Stars Need to Keep Out of the Danger Zone

If you’re a newly forming star system, there’s no better place to be than a stellar nursery. All those raw elements make the perfect building blocks of stars and planets. The problem is that super hot giant stars can release great torrents of radiation, blasting away newly forming planets.
Continue reading “Cooler Stars Need to Keep Out of the Danger Zone”

April 25, 2007March 24, 2012 by Fraser Cain

Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone

Great big Jupiter-like planets are one thing, but the Holy Grail of extrasolar planetary discover is going to be another Earth – complete with life. We’re not there yet, but astronomers announced the next best thing yesterday: a roughly Earth-mass planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its parent star. In other words, liquid water could exist on this rocky planet.
Continue reading “Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone”

February 22, 2007June 19, 2013 by Fraser Cain

Aliens on This World Would See a Double Sunset

Imagine a world orbiting a star in a binary system. Two stars would shine in the day, and the rare nights would occur only when both stars had set below the horizon. Now astronomers have discovered a world where this is the case – the sunsets would be spectacular.
Continue reading “Aliens on This World Would See a Double Sunset”

February 21, 2007March 24, 2012 by Fraser Cain

Exoplanet is Hot and Dry

Astronomers working with the Spitzer Space Telescope announced a tremendous new advance today, when they used the great observatory to successfully analyze the atmosphere of two distant planets. This is an enormously important discovery, and we’ll deal with the implications of this in a second.
Continue reading “Exoplanet is Hot and Dry”

January 31, 2007December 8, 2022 by Fraser Cain

Hubble Sees An Extrasolar Planet’s Atmosphere

Now here’s a feat. The Hubble Space Telescope was able to analyze the atmosphere of a gas giant planet orbiting another star.
Continue reading “Hubble Sees An Extrasolar Planet’s Atmosphere”

January 12, 2007March 24, 2012 by Fraser Cain

Planets Born to a Dying Star

Young stars and new planets go hand-in-hand. But that might not always be the case. An international team of astronomers have discovered a situation where material shed from a dying star is being captured into a planetary disk around a binary companion.
Continue reading “Planets Born to a Dying Star”