First Direct Photo of Alien Planet Finally Confirmed

[PPI Karl]

I know this image is old news, but its verification is new.  Now this is what I call evidence!

This photo taken by Gemini Observatory's adaptive optics system in infrared light shows the star 1RSX J160929.
1-210524 and its likely ~8 Jupiter-mass planet (dot at upper left). The extrasolar planet is touted as the first directly
photographed.  FULL STORY.  Credit: Gemini Observatory

[PPI Brian]

Ah yes, I absolutely love these images. I wish I had adaptive optics on my little telescope. 

Here's another planet directly imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004

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", once every 872 years.

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust 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. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says.

"Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clampin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut's starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt.

source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/fomalhaut.html

[PPI Tracy]

God, those are AMAZING!

[PPI Tim]

Now which planet again is Pandora?

[PPI Brian]

Now which planet again is Pandora?

According to this "documentary", neither. Pandora is a moon of the planet Polyphemus, a giant gas the size of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/GBGDmin_38E&hl=en_US&fs=1&

PS - Oh by the way, it was just a movie. 

[PPI Tracy]

I thought Pandora was a crappy radio progam I got on my Blackberry.

[Gary]

Isn't it Pandora the Explorer?   

[Damian]

Pandoras are an endangered species.

[PPI Tracy]

Isn't it Pandora the Explorer?   

LOL!  Bazinga! 

(Hey man, don't pan Dora the Explorer)  (sorry....s'all I could come up with)