Brobdingnagian uranology news ! For the first time EVER , galaxy researcher have taken flick of planets orb a Lord’s Day - star , much like our own . The first , take by the much darling Hubble Telescope , shows a major planet orbiting the vivid southerly star Fomalhaut , located 25 light - year away in the constellation Piscis Australis . The second picture , snap by upstaging Hawaiian observatories Gemini and Keck , shows two young planets orbiting a completely dissimilar hotshot locate 130 light - years from us ! Take that Hubble ! But I discourage you — like the ultrasound your admirer show you of their three - month old foetus — these picture wow mostly because of what they are , not because of what they look like .
This is what the Hubble Telescope check , conveniently label by our champion at NASA . Where is the major planet , you ask ? Do you see that little underlined part to the right hand ? That ’s the prosaically named Fomalhaut b ! To get the image , Hubble ’s tv camera needed to block out the brightest part of the star , which shines millions of meter brighter than the planet itself .
And here ’s the picture taken by the Gemini and Keck observatory of the organic structure orbiting Star HR8799 . HR8799 is about 1.5 times more massive than our sun , and five metre more luminous . Like the Hubble ’s image , this star needed to have its light jam too in order for us to see the planets . These two , despite being an even not bad distance away , were somewhat easier to find since they ’re young . Being only about 60 million years former , they ’re still glowing from remnant heat from their formation , making them brighter than Fomalhaut B , which only glow when reflect brightness level from Fomalhaut .
Here ’s an artistic rendition of Star HR8799 and it ’s planet . The third planet has n’t been imaged yet , but thanks to numerical calculations , we screw it ’s there ! So in case you were doubting it - yes , other star scheme subsist . And as our galactical photographic camera technology gets better , the pictures will start depend more like actual planets , rather than foetal speck on a giant Eye of Sauron . [ Bad Astronomy ] Image credits : NASA and the Gemini Observatory
Astronomyhubble telescopeSpacestars
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