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.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
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.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Indeed. Detecting and imaging are vastly different things.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
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.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
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.
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
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 Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
This one looks nice on my desktop!!
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
quote:Article sez: If I could stand on the surface of this planet, I’d weigh 4200 kilograms*. That’s over 9000 pounds!
Its over nine thouSAAAAAND! How long you want to bet he's been waiting to include that in an article?
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
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.
Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
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. Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
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?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
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"?
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
That's how they usually detect exoplanets. Combination of wobble and transiting.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yeah, but they're usually not in so close- wobble that's detectible is not what I really meant- I mean does the planet affect the star to the point where the star's gravitational field "skews" and causes everything else in the system to have wildly erratic orbits?
Sorta like how a dense body ("Planet X"?) supposedly interferes with Uranus' orbit, making plotting it's exact position problematic.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Sorta like how a dense body ('Planet X'?) supposedly interferes with Uranus' orbit, making plotting it's exact position problematic."
I think your information is a little out of date, there.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yeah, I'm just sorta shooting for a point (and missing).
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I think you're just going for wondering whether the star has an extreme wobble, or, maybe, a very erratic orbit about the galactic center?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I was thikning that the proximity to the dense planet might make the star move erraticly: a binary system might have stars that move around a point between them, in this case, I was thnking the dense planet's orbit may (when it's orbit is closest to the star) cause the star to move in a way we've not seen before.
Or maybe the planet causes massive eruptions as it gets closer and pulls away... Or maybe the stars are just pinpricks in the cloth of the night sky which shields us from the unbearable light of heaven- light which would give our very souls terminal cancer (which would be a bad thing in my opinion).
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Oh - you mean the center of gravity of the system of the planet and it's host star would be outside both their radii? Like, the point they orbit around is not contained within the star.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yes, something like that, only it's not a continous thing- the two dont orbit each other or anything- it's only when the dense planet dips in close during it's orbit.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
The center of gravity of a two-body system shifts around. I mean it really can't stay still. Really in every single two-body system they orbit each other; even an infinitesimal amount of mass orbiting a massive dense thing will pull its center of gravity away from its center of mass just a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny bit.
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