From A University of California Santa Barbara press release: International Team of Scientists Reports Discovery of a New Planet
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of scientists, including several who are affiliated with UC Santa Barbara, has discovered a new planet the size of Jupiter. The finding is published in the March 18 issue of the journal Nature.
The planet, called CoRoT-9b, was discovered by using the CoRoT space telescope satellite, operated by the French space agency, The Centre National d’Études Spatiales, or CNES. The newly discovered planet orbits a star similar to our sun and is located in the constellation Serpens Cauda, at a distance of 1500 light-years from Earth.
The European-led discovery involved 60 astronomers worldwide. The team included UCSB postdoctoral fellow Avi Shporer, who also works with the UCSB-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, California. Three more LCOGT scientists –– Tim Lister, Rachel Street, and Marton Hidas –– also contributed.
“CoRoT-9b is the first transiting extrasolar planet that is definitely similar to a planet in our solar system, namely Jupiter,” said Shporer. “What is special about this planet is that it transits a star, and it is a temperate planet. It has great potential for future studies concerning its physical characteristics and atmosphere.” The planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium, but may contain up to 20 Earth masses of heavier elements including rock and water under high pressure. It thus appears to be very similar to the solar system’s giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn.
A transit occurs when a celestial body passes in front of its host star and blocks some of the star’s light. This type of eclipse causes a small drop in the apparent brightness of the star and enables the planet’s mass, diameter, density, and temperature to be deduced. CoRoT-9b takes 95 Earth days to orbit its star. This is about 10 times longer than that of any planet previously discovered by the transit method.
The CoRoT satellite identified the planet after 150 days of continuous observation in the summer of 2008. The discovery of the planet was verified by ground-based telescopes. Those include the two-meter Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Faulkes Telescope North (FTN), located on Mt. Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui. “Since a transit occurs only once every 95 days, FTN was at the right place at the right time to observe the transit in September 2009, thereby confirming the CoRoT detection,” said Shporer.
He explained that while temperate gas giants are so far the largest known group of planets, CoRoT-9b is the first transiting planet of this kind. The discovery will lead to a better understanding of such commonly occurring planets and open up a new field of research on the atmospheres of moderate and low temperature planets.
Shporer notes that the study of planets outside our solar system is rapidly progressing. “Only 25 years ago no extrasolar planets were known, and today we know of more than 400,” he said. “Undoubtedly, many more exciting discoveries await in the future.”
The CoRoT space telescope satellite is named for “convection, rotation, and transits.” France, Austria, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, and the European Space Agency (ESA) contributed to the telescope. It was specifically designed to detect transiting exoplanets and carry out seismological studies of stars. Its results are supplemented by observations from several ground-based telescopes, including the IAC-80 Teide Observatory, Canary Islands, Spain; the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, Hawaii; the Isaac Newton Telescope, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, Canary Islands, Spain; the Swiss Euler telescope, Chile; the Faulkes Telescope North, Hawaii, part of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network; and, the ESO 3.6m telescope, Chile.
The Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network is constructing a network of telescopes for monitoring variable stars and explosions on the sky. In a long-term collaboration with UC Santa Barbara, LCOGT has already constructed the Byrne Observatory at UC’s Sedgwick Reserve and supports collaborative research on extrasolar planets, transients, and supernovae with UCSB scientists.
Avi Shporer received his B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. He recently began a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Physics at UCSB, and is affiliated with the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.
###
Give me a confirmed example to take, Leif, and I’ll show you what the associated errors of the measurements are.
I’ll get more interested when someone suggests the presence of large amounts of oil on a relatively reachable exoplanet.
Pure logic. Can I ask you a personal question Leif? Do you have pointy ears? Speaking of Dr. Spock, I have always thought that if I ever win the lottery, I’ld have my ears pointed. Then on St. Patty’s day, I’ld walk into some tavern in Ireland and just kinda move my long, thick red hair out of the way, in a nonchalant kind of way, and freak out the bar rats.
Grumbles (19:10:08) :
they can tell the temperature, density and geological make up of this planet? At absolute best they could measure its size.
The distance from the star and the size are well on its way to determining [‘inferring’ is all they claimed] the other quantities. So, not so ridiculous.
Brian G Valentine (20:38:58) :
Give me a confirmed example to take, Leif, and I’ll show you what the associated errors of the measurements are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-solar_eclipse_STEREO-B.ogg
Brian G Valentine (20:38:58) :
Give me a confirmed example to take, Leif, and I’ll show you what the associated errors of the measurements are.
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/binaries/algol.html
There are thousands of such examples.
Leif Svalgaard (20:50:11)
Too many assumptions. As you rightly point out The distance from the star and the size can be easily calculated, the other things however involve huge assumptions, as well as significantly rounded calculations, like star density.
Pamela Gray (20:43:44) :
Do you have pointy ears?
Hair a bit too long right now, will check later…
Then on St. Patty’s day
Triggered some useless trivia tidbit:
Patty was not Irish at all. His father was Roman, his mother English, and he was born in Wales, from where he at sixteen years of age was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken to their shores from where he never returned.
Pamela Gray: “Then on St. Patty’s day, I’d walk into some tavern in Ireland and just kinda move my long, thick red hair out of the way, in a nonchalant kind of way, and freak out the bar rats.”
My mom is an Irish redhead…and she definitely influences the world around her. Both fiery and sunny…she is loved by thousands. A real good woman.
Maybe that is why I have so much magnetic respect for you. [And fear and trembling here….just a lowly shark lol].
OK….back to this “new” planet…
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
It will take me a few days, Leif.
It was a longstanding problem to demonstrate the existence of planets associated with stars. Sure there have been lots of advances, but the difficulties with the resolution of apparent diameters of the order 0.001″ remain the same
Grumbles (21:03:47) :
Too many assumptions.
We don’t think so. From its size we deduce that cannot be a wholly rocky planet, because we know the chemical composition of its star and there is not enough ‘heavy’ materials [as rocks are made of] to have formed a fully rocky planet of that size, so the planet must be Jupiter-like [i.e. most of it must be Hydrogen and Helium of which there are plenty] and then from known properties of gas planets we can infer the other stuff. This is not rocket science.
I didn’t stop at every comment but is it just me who thinks this “discovery” is essentially meaningless?
I mean what does it mean whent here are millions of stars and planets and this one is 1500 light years away.
Are we supposed to get all excited about a unique grain of sand on the beach.
Even if the 60 astronomers discovered there are cancer curing minerals on the surface of this new planet it would still be meaningless for centuries while we wait for technology to make space exploration possible.
What this hyped discovery does do is promote the additional funding and research these astronomers would like.
Sound familliar?
Really folks can we afford to fund every professional hobby as if it’s vital?
There’s an enormous list of right here and now needs around our planet.
Why isn’t laying on our backs gazing at the summer night sky enough for now?
kadaka (15:19:46) :
As the star continues along the main sequence
Does not move along the MS, but off it [up to the right in the H-R diagram]
As it does so, will it engulf and consume the gas giant? If so, will the planet still be a “gas” giant, with the gas (mostly) still there?
The gas will be blown off and the rocky core left.
If so, will the infusion of a fresh supply of hydrogen and helium cause the star to flare up?
No, as that fresh stuff [what little is left after the blow-off] will vaporize, but the vapors will be on the surface of the star where there is no fusion.
“Why isn’t laying on our backs gazing at the summer night sky enough for now?”
Because, that activity gives too much opportunity for the mind to wander and reflect on
“the fact that we humans have been overheating the atmosphere for over 200 years” – (S Solomon, 2007)
Leif Svalgaard 20:21:42 “There is no need for you to be skeptical of observations of eclipses, unless you have other reasons for not wanting to see this, like the cardinals that would not look through Galileo’s telescope :-)”
It’s not clear that anyone refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, but, in any case, none of the very few who may or may not have refused was a cardinal. Two of the most prominent were not priests at all, and one of them (Cremonini) was prosecuted by the Inquisition for atheism and heresy. Another one, Clavius, the most respected astronomer of the time, and a Jesuit, accepted Galileo’s discoveries in 1611, many years before Galileo was prosecuted, but he seems to have thought that the mountains on the moon were spurious – maybe a defect in the telescope, or maybe something that would be inherent in all telescopes – I don’t know, exactly.
From ancient times until the time of Galileo, “scientists” (natural philosophers) believed that it was invalid to try to learn anything about the world by interfering with it or by artificial means. A major objection to Galileo’s telescope was that you couldn’t go to the moon or Jupiter to see if the telescope had gotten it right, whereas if you used it to view something on earth, you could check it. Galileo was trying to overthrow the philosophy of science that had been *the* philosophy of science for thousands of years. This together with the self-interest of Aristotelian professors, plus his own obnoxious personality, is what did him in.
That said, I’m finding many of the messages in this thread (not including your message) to be amazing. The topic is not AGW, but the attitudes are the same; they’re just as if the topic were AGW. I say this as an AGW skeptic.
Brian G Valentine (21:14:46) :
difficulties with the resolution of apparent diameters of the order 0.001″ remain the same
No, because large enough planets cause a measurable dimming of the star [our instruments have no finally become good enough] and we have observed hundreds of such cases. The Kepler spacecraft is right now staring at 100,000 stars and we expect soon to discover many thousands of exoplanets.
Leif 21:10:53
Hmmm, may have got you finally. St. Patrick escaped and came back to the larger isle, was converted, and then returned to Eire.
=================
Kim – In case you mean that I got Leif, let me say, what I said at about being amazed by many of the messages in this thread is important, and it certainly isn’t anything that gets Leif.
Smoking Frog 22:09:49
Oh, no. I am merely disputing Leif’s claim that St. Patrick permantently stayed in Ireland after his kidnapping.
Whaddya bet he finds research to dispute me?
===========
Uh, ‘permatently’ means to pitch permanently a tent.
===============
Leif Svalgaard (21:16:42) :
We assume the chemical composition of its star. Please be aware we can theorize with some accuracy the chemical composition of our sun and could assume that all stars have the same chemical composition. We assume that it is mostly hydrogen and helium and not another gases whose makeup we don’t know. We assume that there is only one planet in the orbit whereas there could be two opposite each other halving our estimations of the planets year’s. We only KNOW the properties of a couple of planets, (as far as i know we have not collected any “air” or “soil” samples from Jupiter) the rest we assume to be similar based on observation from a long way away.
So if you were wrong about the chemical composition of this particular star, an assumption that cannot be tested in my life time all other calculations would be wrong. And the exact chemical composition of a star is a big assumption.
kim (21:38:21) :
Hmmm, may have got you finally. St. Patrick escaped and came back to the larger isle, was converted, and then returned to Eire.
Did he return to Wales?
Grumbles (22:10:57) :
We assume the chemical composition of its star.
No, we measure it: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/961112a.html
Your assumption that modern science is based on assumptions is just that, one assumption too many.
kim (22:03:52) : “Oh, no. I am merely disputing Leif’s claim that St. Patrick permantently stayed in Ireland after his kidnapping. Whaddya bet he finds research to dispute me?”
Sorry, I overlooked that message.
I wouldn’t bet anything that Leif finds research to dispute you. I wouldn’t rely much on Wikipedia, but it does say that your story is from one of the only two authentic letters by Patrick.
“Leif Svalgaard (22:16:54) :
Grumbles (22:10:57) :
We assume the chemical composition of its star.
No, we measure it:”
Who is “we”?
And citing anything from Goddard at this point…when they have been predicting catastrophic GISS warming…is not too effective.
Grumbles has a point….a big point.
In comparison to what’s out there…we really do not know anything. It really is not rocket science.
A little more complex…..
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA