posted
Uh, no. If you read the first sentence correctly, this is the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun. Astronomers have been photographing planets around stars for years by detecting the wobble and the change in brightness.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Uh, no. If you read the first sentence correctly, this is the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun. Astronomers have been photographing planets around stars for years by detecting the wobble and the change in brightness.
Almost right. Astronomers have been detecting planets around stars for years by detecting the wobble and the change in brightness. They've only been able to directly photograph a few (only two that I can think of offhand), mostly because most of the planets we've detected so far are way too close to their star to get a picture of it.
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Indeed. Detecting and imaging are vastly different things.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Sorry, vague language there. But I know that this isn't the first photo of an extra-solar planet. There've been a few others.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I don't see anything about it here, though, and I haven't heard of that before. As far as I knew they thought an actual photograph or image of an exoplanet was years away.
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quote: "...Until now, the only planet-like bodies that have been directly imaged outside of the solar system are either free-floating in space (i.e. not found around a star), or orbit brown dwarfs, which are dim and make it easier to detect planetary-mass companions..."
This thingy: 2M1207b
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posted
Yet another proof that truth is stranger than fiction. Honestly, most people would have called B.S. on a sci-fi movie or novel that had a planet like this.
Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Well technically it might not be a planet...it could be a drown dwarf, or something between a brown dwarf and a planet. No-one really seems to know where to draw the line. The only thing that is certain is that COROT-exo-3b is very strange, and must surely be the result of God smoking pot during creation.
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I thought a good way to draw the line was to say that it radiates more energy than it receives from the star it orbits?
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Maybe some sorta proto-dwarfstar? Somethnig that either never quite made it or will oneday become a brown dwarf? Still seems like it needs more mass for a dwarfstar.
...I wonder if it's proximity causes the star to "wobble"?
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