It’s Official!
Comments(8)
A Gemini image of a star and its 8-Jupiter mass planet taken in 2008. Click for a larger version. Credit: Gemini Observatory.
I wrote about this back in 2008 and finally we have confirmation this is indeed the first directly imaged planet around another star!
Here’s the first part of the press release from the Gemini Observatory:
A planet only about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed orbiting a Sun-like star at over 300 times farther from the star than the Earth is from our Sun. The newly confirmed planet is the least massive planet known to orbit at such a great distance from its host star. The discovery utilized high-resolution adaptive optics technology at the Gemini Observatory to take direct images and spectra of the planet.
First reported in September 2008 by a team led by David Lafrenière (then at the University of Toronto, now at the University of Montreal and Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec), the suspected planetary system required further observations over time to confirm that the planet and star were indeed moving through space together. “Back in 2008 what we knew for sure was that there was this young planetary mass object sitting right next to a young Sun-like star on the sky,” says Lafrenière. The extremely close proximity of the two objects strongly suggested that they were associated with each other but it was still possible (but unlikely) that they were unrelated and only aligned by chance in the sky. According to Lafrenière, “Our new observations rule out this chance alignment possibility, and thus confirms that the planet and the star are related to each other.”
Read the rest of this and get more visuals at the Gemini site.
What’s so exciting about it? It’s not like ETs live there.
To photographically spot a planet around another star is an amazing feat.
To diminish the achievement with a short-sighted comment like that is to have no interest in improving anything let alone science and it is spoken in what America is on its way to being: unimaginative, dependent on others because we are fast becoming unable to do for ourselves and just plain lazy. In short – second class – so sad.
Don’t take that personally, you are just parroting where some in power want us to believe.
I do not think we should go down that road is all.
Its incredible to be able to see an entirely different Solar System like that!
Yes, the whole idea just gets me going.
I apologize to Harry for taking the brunt of what came out. He was great with the comment really. See, I think it’s kind of a “group-think” thing and to go off the handle like I did solves nothing towards a good dialog. Yes, I’m in the “group-think” crowd too of course, just a different group. Harry is one of those people who make this blog such a fun thing to do and I thank him.
I try not to get all worked up but once in a while things overflow. I know, no cookies for me.
Yeah, a whole other SOLAR SYSTEM!!! I didn’t think of it in those terms but HECK YEAH!
Being able to directly image another solar system is phenomenal, especially when you think that not too many years ago nobody knew for sure if there were any other planets out there. I like HR 8799, which is a young star with three planets Gemini has now directly imaged. The system is only about 60 million years old, and it still has a massive dust disk. We may be in a position to watch planets forming around this star (one of about 80 currently being studied).
This work is very important and intensely interesting. If Tom had a slight “overflow”, I can understand because I completely fell out.
Gemini just rocked our world.
Maybe Harry can go get the gallon of milk for me. LOL just razzing ya Harry.
It is very cool to see what we are taking pictures of and what we are finding in the neighborhood.
I wish we could send robots to all these places or at least a few more places. I know it is expensive to do but think of the data we could collect.
Thanks for the update. It makes me wonder if our solar system might not have a large planetary neighbor lurking some 300 AU away from good ole Sol. Thirty billion miles is pretty far away as the solar system goes. It might have escaped detection being so far away and perhaps well away from the ecliptic. I recall the Nemesis hypothesis which attributed periodic extinctions to impact events due to an unseen stellar companion to the sun causing comets/asteroids to rain down on the inner solar system. However, an 8*Mj planet could also fit the bill.
That being said, it’s unlikely. It would be a radio to IR object and be bright enough to be easily detected in modern times.
Makes me wonder why Harry even read the story. Probably mistook it for what he would term REAL news; something regarding ‘Dancing With the Stars.”