Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The Great Exoplanet Debate, part 3: Limits to Determining Habitability
Summary: In part three of The Great Exoplanet Debate, the panel discusses our broadening view of the ‘habitable zone’ around different star types, and our preconceptions of what makes a ‘habitable environment.’
Jupiter’s Melting Heart Sheds Light on Mysterious Exoplanet
Scientists now have evidence that Jupiter’s core has been dissolving, and the implications stretch far outside of our solar system.
Jupiter might be having a change of heart. Literally.
New simulations suggest that Jupiter’s rocky core has been liquefying and mixing with the rest of the planet’s innards. With this new data, astronomers hope to better explain a recent puzzling discovery of a strange planet outside of our solar system.
“It’s a really important piece of the puzzle of trying to figure out what’s going on inside giant planets,” said Jonathan Fortney, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz who was not affiliated with the research.
BBC viewer and amateur astronomer discovers new exoplanet
The public push initiated on BBC Two’s Stargazing Live series to find planets beyond our Solar System has had an immediate result.
A viewer who answered the call has helped spot a world that appears to be circling a star dubbed SPH10066540.
The planet is described as being similar in size to our Neptune and circles its parent every 90 days.
Chris Holmes from Peterborough found it by looking through time-lapsed images of stars on Planethunters.org.
The website hosts data gathered by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, and asks volunteers to sift the information for anything unusual that might have been missed in a computer search.
“I’ve never had a telescope. I’ve had a passing interest in where things are in the sky, but never had any more knowledge about it than that,” Mr Holmes told BBC News.
“Being involved in a project like this and actually being the one to find something is a very exciting position.”
Astronomers Find Saturn’s Possible Cosmic Doppelgänger
By analyzing the silhouette of an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star some 420 light years from Earth, a team of astrophysicists has discovered an exoplanet that just might turn out to be Saturn’s cosmicdoppelgänger.
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rochester University Eric Mamajek and graduate student Mark Pecaut studied data from the international SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) project.
They were looking at the star’s light pattern; periodic dimming is a telltale sign that a planet is passing in front of it. A spherical planet will dim a star’s light regularly. As seen from Earth, the star’s light will dim as the planet starts to cross it, getting darker until it reaches a point of maximum dimness – the point when the planet is directly between the Earth and the star. Then, the light will get brighter at the same pace as it previously dimmed.
But in December 2010, they noticed something odd. As they analyzed data gathered over a 54 day period in early 2007, the star 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 dimmed irregularly. The object passing in front of it couldn’t be a spherical planet, so what was it?
This artist’s animation illustrates the Kepler-16 system from an overhead view, showing the eccentric orbits of the two stars as they twirl around each other every 41 days like figure skaters. The planet, which was discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, orbits in a circle around both of the stars every 229 days. The larger of the stars is about 69 percent of the mass of the sun, and the smaller is about 20 percent of the sun’s mass. The planet is about the mass of Saturn.
NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers a World Orbiting Two Stars
The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA’s Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet — a planet orbiting two stars — 200 light-years from Earth.
Unlike Star Wars’ Tatooine, the planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it.
NASA to Announce Kepler Discovery at Media Briefing
NASA will host a news briefing at 11 a.m. PDT, Thursday, Sept. 15, to announce a new discovery by the Kepler mission. The briefing will be held in the Syvertson auditorium, building N-201, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The event will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website at
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet.
Vela constellation, home of HD 85512 b.
Source: NASA.
Newly Discovered Planet: Hot, Muggy And (Maybe) Liveable
Sort of like Washington, D.C., in the summer:
“It would feel like a steam bath — hot, sticky and beyond uncomfortable.”
That’s how The Associated Press describes the way scientists are describing “HD 85512 b … a newly discovered planet about 35 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela.”
t’s the second planet outside our solar system that seems to be orbiting in “the habitable zone” around its star, according to the European Southern Observatory, which today (9/12) announced the discovery of HD 85512 b and more than 50 other plants around other stars. In that habitable zone, “water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right,” the ESC adds.
![“Diamond” Planet Found; May Be Stripped Star Exotic crystalline world orbits fast-spinning stellar corpse, study says.
An exotic planet as dense as diamond has been found in the Milky Way, and astronomers think the world is a former star that got transformed by its orbital partner.
The odd planet was discovered orbiting what’s known as a millisecond pulsar—a tiny, fast-spinning corpse of a massive star that died in a supernova.
Astronomers estimate that the newfound planet is 34,175 miles (55,000 kilometers) across, or about five times Earth’s diameter.
In addition, “we are very confident it has a density about 18 times that of water,” said study leader Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne, Australia.
“This means it can’t be made of gases like hydrogen and helium like most stars but [must be made of] heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, making it most likely crystalline in nature, like a diamond.”
Keep reading.](http://s.glbimg.com/jo/g1/f/original/2011/08/25/pulsarplanet_poster_psd.jpg)
“Diamond” Planet Found; May Be Stripped Star
Exotic crystalline world orbits fast-spinning stellar corpse, study says.
An exotic planet as dense as diamond has been found in the Milky Way, and astronomers think the world is a former star that got transformed by its orbital partner.
The odd planet was discovered orbiting what’s known as a millisecond pulsar—a tiny, fast-spinning corpse of a massive star that died in a supernova.
Astronomers estimate that the newfound planet is 34,175 miles (55,000 kilometers) across, or about five times Earth’s diameter.
In addition, “we are very confident it has a density about 18 times that of water,” said study leader Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne, Australia.
“This means it can’t be made of gases like hydrogen and helium like most stars but [must be made of] heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, making it most likely crystalline in nature, like a diamond.”
ODDBALL EXOPLANET IS DARKER THAN COAL
An alien world reflects less than one percent of the starlight that falls on it, making it the blackest exoplanet known.
The strange world, TrES-2b, is a gas giant the size of Jupiter, rather than a solid, rocky body like Earth or Mars, astronomers said.
It closely orbits the star GSC 03549-02811, located about 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Draco the Dragon.
“TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it’s truly an alien world,” David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a press release issued by Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
New Estimate for Alien Earths: 2 Billion in Our Galaxy Alone
Roughly one out of every 37 to one out of every 70 sunlike stars in the sky might harbor an alien Earth, a new study reveals.
These findings hint that billions of Earthlike planets might exist in our galaxy, researchers added.
NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft Discovers Its First Rocky Exoplanet
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered Kepler-10b, its first confirmed rocky planet and the smallest transiting exoplanet discovered to date. Kepler-10b is only 1.4 times the size of Earth and has an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter, similar to that of an iron dumbbell. The planet orbits its star in only 0.84 days and is not in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist.
NASA Planet Hunters Announce Smallest Exoplanet Ever Found, Just 560 Light Years Away
More exoplanet discoveries are pending, as Kepler team approaches deadline to publish data.
A tiny world of molten rock, orbiting scorchingly close to its host star, is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system, NASA announced today. And it’s likely only the first in a parade of planet discoveries to be announced this spring by the Kepler Space Telescope team.
Kepler-10b, as the new world is called, is a rocky, dense and hellish planet just 1.4 times the size of Earth. It’s not in the Goldilocks zone, however — it’s much too close to its star for life to exist. It’s so hot (about 2,500 degrees F at the surface) that boiled iron and silicates are flowing into the stellar wind, much like a comet’s tail.
