European Observatory to Make 'Major' Alien Planet Announcement Mondayby Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 10 September 2011 Time: 08:39 AM ET
A European observatory will announce what it describes as "major" alien planet findings on Monday (Sept. 12).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) Monday to "report significant new results in the field of exoplanets," ESO officials said in a media alert.
The results were obtained with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher instrument, better known as HARPS, officials said. HARPS is a spectrograph on ESO's 11.8-foot (3.6-meter) telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Participating in the press conference will be:
- ? Francesco Pepe, Geneva Observatory, Switzerland
- ? Lisa Kaltenegger, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
- ? Markus Kissler-Patig or Joe Liske, ESO
Kissler-Patig or Liske will discuss the future of exoplanet research with ESO's European Extremely Large Telescope, ESO officials said. This instrument will be the world's largest telescope, boasting a 129-foot (39.3-meter) main mirror. It will be built on Chile's Cerro Armazones mountain, and could begin operations by early in the next decade.
ESO didn't give any further details about what Pepe and Kaltenegger will discuss. Both scientists are actively involved in the search for potentially habitable alien planets ? those on which liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist.
According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, astronomers have discovered 564 confirmed alien planets to date, with more than 1,000 more candidate worlds suggested by data from the Kepler space observatory.
Wow, I'm really intrigued. I look forward to hearing their news release. ;D
Ditto
Here's a link to ESO's website and today's announcement: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1134a/
Fantastic! Thank you! (what a great site)
Thanks for posting this Brian.
You know, do you think we have enough time to build an armada of star ships to get most of us to that one planet in the "habitable zone" before the joint coalition of Klingons, Borgs, and Cylons invades Earth in 2012?
Very interesting announcement today. But I was kind of confused because another potentially habitable planet was discovered orbiting a star named Gliese 581. Then I remembered that Gliese was the name of an astronomer who catalogued about 1500 "nearby" stars, which means there are 1500 stars named Gliese. :D
The first planet is called Gliese 581d, and is about 20 light years from Earth in the constellation Libra. It is the first confirmed rocky planet to orbit its star in the habitable zone. ESO announced they had discovered a new planet orbiting Gliese 370 which is in the southern constellation Vela, and named it HD 85512 b. Their initial estimates place the planet at 3.6 times the mass of Earth with an orbital period or "year" being 58.43 days. Talk about not having enough time in the day to get stuff done. ;D
Here's a Wiki link about the new planet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_85512_b
And here's a clip from Stephen Hawking's "Into the Universe" that talks about traveling to Gliese 581 system. (Sorry, but I don't know think we have enough time to get there before the Borg get us next year, Jason. We'll just have to fight them off like we did in that book written by HG Wells.) ;D
http://www.youtube.com/v/H5zSWQwpjPg
I absolutely LOVE "Into the Universe"! Amazing!
I'd like to see parts of East County become habitable zones before the end of next year. ;D Right now, you can't tell the Klingons from the native El Cajones in some parts. ;D
The news is tantalizing, to say the least. They're not long away from being able to determine if any of these are water planets, too. Exciting times to follow this kind of science!