Stellary Starry Universe

NASA’s Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars.

 

Thousands of new exoplanets may need a new naming system. With so many potential new exoplanets that will likely be discovered maybe it is time to revamp the system of naming planets so it is less confusing.

 

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

Nov. 13, 2008: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust (a telltale sign of planet formation) was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA’s Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. (Note: A coronagraph is a device that can block the bright light of a central star to reveal faint objects around it.) It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

Source: Nasa Science – click here or title for full article

 

 

Extrasolar Planet

extrasolar planet – definition
A planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The first such planet to be discovered, in 1991, was found orbiting a pulsar, although most of the more than 100 extrasolar planets that have since been identified orbit normal stars. Many of them, known as hot Jupiters, are very large and revolve around their star in extremely close orbits, at less than the distance of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. Continued below…

Other Jupiter-sized and larger planets have been found in highly eccentric orbits. Evidence suggests that extrasolar planets may be relatively common throughout the universe. In 2004, astronomers located the first extrasolar planet with an atmosphere containing oxygen and carbon. The planet, HD 209458b (also called Osiris), orbits a star 150 light-years from Earth.

The apparent lack of terrestrial, Earth-sized planets among those that have so far been discovered may simply be the result of the much greater difficulty in identifying smaller, less massive bodies at such great distances. Also called exoplanet.

reference: “extrasolar planet.” The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 12 Nov. 2008. .

 

Above is the latest news on extrasolar planets. There are over 300 extra solar planets discovered so far. More will be discovered, possibly any day there could be a new extrasolar planet discovered.

 

 

Two planets about 300 light-years from Earth slammed into each other recently, marking the first time evidence of such a catastrophic collision has been seen by scientists.

Astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) said the crash involved two planets orbiting a star in the Aries constellation.

Massive and catastrophic

The collision was uncovered while astronomers were attempting to measure the star’s age, and found an unusually large amount of dust orbiting the star.

“It’s as if Earth and Venus collided with each other,” said Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. “Astronomers have never seen anything like this before. Apparently, major catastrophic collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system.” …

Source : Cosmos – Click here or title to view full article