Astronomers take photos of planet from outer Space
May 2nd, 2005 Leave a comment Visited 71 times, 2 so far today
Astronomers take photos of planet from outer Space
Scientists believe that they have taken what are in reality the first photos of a planet outside our solar system. These planets are generally known as ‘exoplanet’ and the one discovered is expected to be around five times bigger and 10 times hotter than the biggest planet in our solar system, Jupiter. The photos were taken last year from the Telescope at Mount Paranaol in Chile.
The news came from the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Saturday. They also reported that the planet revolves around a small dwarf star. They had earlier said they detected an object 230 light-years from the Earth close to a brown dwarf, but giving off 100 times less light than it did.
Considering it is quite tough to distinguish between a planet and a dwarf star, they were unable to say whether the object was itself a brown dwarf, or a celestial body meeting the criteria of an exoplanet and orbiting its neighbor. However, the latest observations have somewhat confirmed that this heavenly body is indeed a planet existing outside the solar system.
The exoplanet is twice as far from its sun as Neptune is from the Earth’s sun and its orbit takes 2,500 years.
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May 21st, 2005 at 12:25 pm
If planet finders ever discover an Earth-like planet around a red dwarf star that supports life, I think it will be one of the most beautiful discoveries in history, since Galileo first looked at the stars through a telescope in 1608 A.D. Because red dwarf stars burn their hydrogen so much slower than the Sun does that they must have a life span of trillions of years. That’s an enormous amount of time for life to evolve.