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This Is The First Photo of an Exoplanet Candidate 1,200 Light-Years Away
ScienceAlert ^ | June 17, 2016 | Josh Hrala

Posted on 04/24/2019 11:21:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv

Astronomers have managed to capture an amazingly clear image of CVSO 30c - a potential exoplanet orbiting a distant star named CVSO 30, that lies some 1,200 light-years away.

Besides being breathtaking to look at, researchers are extra excited about the new photo, because it could mean that CVSO 30 actually has two planets orbiting it instead of just one.

Follow-up observations and analysis will be needed to confirm CVSO 30c as a true exoplanet, but if verified, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet and a far-out exoplanet.

Four years ago, astronomers found a different exoplanet - named CVSO 30b, which is too faint to see in this photo - orbiting the star, thanks to the transit method. This involves detecting planets by looking at how a star's light flickers when something passes in front of it.

Unlike CVSO 30b, which orbits remarkably close to CVSO 30 at a distance of roughly 1.2 million kilometres (744,000 miles), and takes only 11 hours to complete one lap, CVSO 30c is way further out, at a distance of 98,730,000,000,000 kilometres (61,347,977,809,592 miles) or 660 AU - a unit that's equivalent to the distance between Earth and the Sun.

In other words, CVSO 30c is 660 times further from its star than we are from our Sun.

At this distance, it takes CVSO 30c about 27,000 years to orbit CVSO 30 just once.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: 2m1207b; astronomy; betapictoris; betapictorisc; coconuts2b; cvso30; cvso30c; pds70b; science; xplanets
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To: Mr_Moonlight

They added three orders of magnitude (and several decimal places of precision) doing unit conversions.


21 posted on 04/25/2019 2:51:54 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Schumer delenda est.)
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To: Captain Rhino

The angular distance between the planet and its star is about 0.0005 degrees, or 1.8 arcseconds. Pluto is much smaller than that in a telescope. What is amazing is the ability to see the planet without it getting lost in the glare of the star. I suspect that this involved stacking lots of short exposures to get adequate dynamic range. Still amazingly sharp optics.


22 posted on 04/25/2019 3:04:05 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Schumer delenda est.)
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To: TigersEye

Far out AND solid...dude.


23 posted on 04/25/2019 4:11:57 AM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and diamonds, and harder to find.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Looks like someone at the end of the street with a flashlight.......maybe a burglar?


24 posted on 04/25/2019 4:13:54 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (uizzzp)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

Agree completely.

Add to that complexity the fact that the initial imagery is both raw data and electronic (CD image capture) and you add a lot of interference that needs to be filtered out.

Your point about many short exposures from separate observatories is probably a key factor in the discovery since, with a calculated 27,000 year orbital period, any reasonable observation period (expressed in fractions of a human lifetime) would, necessarily, encompass only a very short segment of a single orbit of the planet. Getting the planet to emerge from observational “noise” had to require massive computer processing followed by cross matching between the participating observatories to confirm they were really looking at the same distant point in space.

It really is a remarkable achievement.

(I assume that their initial interest in the star was it’s relatively young age (4.5 million years) and curiosity about what could be observed about early planetary formation within its accretion disc. The fact that there was already at least one discernible planet observable using the transit method probably came as a surprise.)


25 posted on 04/25/2019 4:14:34 AM PDT by Captain Rhino (Determined effort today forges tomorrow.)
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To: Captain Rhino

So, bring a sweater?


26 posted on 04/25/2019 4:19:24 AM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: SunkenCiv

Since I am somewhat red/green colorblind, wonder if it would partially affect me?


27 posted on 04/25/2019 4:19:29 AM PDT by wally_bert (Disc jockeys are as interchangeable as spark plugs.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Space is beyond huge. Think of it this way. what they are seeing was reflected light that came off a planet around 800 A.D. 600 years before colubus “ sailed the ocean blue”. Righht now that palnet couls be dust , hit by a huge meteorite and vaporized. but we wouldnt know that until 3219..


28 posted on 04/25/2019 4:28:04 AM PDT by Ikeon (The road to hell is paved with good intentions usually built by angry libs - there any other kind?)
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To: Ikeon

Jez, sorry about the misspelled words, I quit coffee, my shakey fingers are all over today.


29 posted on 04/25/2019 4:31:50 AM PDT by Ikeon (The road to hell is paved with good intentions usually built by angry libs - there any other kind?)
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To: Captain Rhino

I am not sure how they computed the period of the distant planet, but I am nearly certain it was not from angular measurements. If they have the period of the near-in eclipsing companion planet and can measure the associated Doppler shift of its star, they provides constraints on the size of the small orbit and therefore mass of the star. Knowing mass of the star and distance to the planet one can estimate the period of a circular orbit.


30 posted on 04/25/2019 5:04:39 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Schumer delenda est.)
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To: SunkenCiv

So what are we seeing? Is the planet the big white globe in the middle or the white dot at 10:30?


31 posted on 04/25/2019 5:08:51 AM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: Larry Lucido

Can’t hurt but, at - 386 degrees Fahrenheit (surface temperature of Pluto), you’d better make sure your spacesuit heater is working properly.


32 posted on 04/25/2019 5:09:52 AM PDT by Captain Rhino (Determined effort today forges tomorrow.)
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To: sparklite2

It’s the little white dot at 10:30. Don’t feel alone in being uncertain about what was referred to. I thought it was the big pale blue dot until I checked the article for further details. It’s circled in the image in the article so the reader won’t miss it.


33 posted on 04/25/2019 5:22:35 AM PDT by Captain Rhino (Determined effort today forges tomorrow.)
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To: Captain Rhino
"the planet is the tiny tiny brown pixel at about the 10:30 -11:00 o’clock position off of the star."

In 13,500 years it should serve as a strong signal that it's happy hour!

34 posted on 04/25/2019 5:53:58 AM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

27,000 years is the number reported in the article.

Even assuming observation from above or below the orbital plain, an orbit that large would be difficult to discern from a straight line over a short period of observation. So your surmise concerning fitting observed data to theoretical orbit calculations makes sense. Once, that is, you believe you are actually dealing with a planet in orbit.

Small as it appears, how big would that planet have to be to register as an image of (?) pixels from 1200 light years away?


35 posted on 04/25/2019 6:26:07 AM PDT by Captain Rhino (Determined effort today forges tomorrow.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Its just a light blob moving around really really far away from us but until we can decide on what it actually is we are calling it an “exoplanet”. We thought we spotted a single cell life form but the triggering caused by the recapture of the escaped neutrinos caused an automatic voluntary spontaneous abortion of the viable fetus. The host being’s mental well being has been compromised and now we must send trillions of dollars in compensation to the host beings for their fragile mental well state lest they will become the largest irritant in the known galaxy.


36 posted on 04/25/2019 7:00:52 AM PDT by Delta 21 (Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true.... ~~ Donald J. Trump)
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To: vmpolesov

660 AUs is more than 1% of a light year.


37 posted on 04/25/2019 11:01:37 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: TigersEye

To the naked eye, those planets are outta sight!


38 posted on 04/25/2019 11:32:42 AM PDT by Redcitizen
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To: Redcitizen

From that outer planet its own star would probably look about like any other star. Whoa!


39 posted on 04/25/2019 7:25:26 PM PDT by TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)
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To: Captain Rhino
Small as it appears, how big would that planet have to be to register as an image of (?) pixels from 1200 light years away?

Good question. In professional telescopes and other professional optics pixel pitch (pixels per millimeter) are matched to optical resolution. The resolving power of an optical system is in radians is:

ds = 1.22 x wavelength / aperture

where:

ds = resolving power in radians
1.22 = empirical constant for a circular aperture
wavelength = optical wavelenth, use 550 nanometers for visible light
aperture = objective diameter in the same units as wavelength.

For the Hubble Space telescope that works out to about 2.29 x 10^-7 radians. The resolution at 1200 light years would be about 2.6 billion kilometers or 17 AU. For two objects to be resolvable to the HST at that distance they would have to about 17 times the distance between the earth and sun apart.

At the distance to Pluto (40 AU) the resolution of the HST is about 1375 km about half the diameter of Pluto, 2377 km. Pluto would occupy four pixels, two horizontally, two vertically, in the HST.

40 posted on 04/27/2019 8:30:39 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Schumer delenda est.)
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