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.
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Steve Oregon (21:20:57) :
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?
Richard Feynman wrote a letter answering that question.
Grumbles (22:10:57) :
If astronomers were assuming that all stars had the same composition as the sun, they would not claim that various stars have different compositions, but they do claim it.
Correction:
In comparison to what’s out there…we really do not know anything. It really IS rocket science.
Even more complex…..
Leif Svalgaard (22:16:54) :
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
The link proves it would be impossible to know the chemical composition of that star, given a) we don’t know the total makeup of our star and b) this star is too far away to pinpoint the amount of Hydrogen and helium (i must stress these are assumed gases, NASA have never collected any of these gases from the sun and base our observations on the observations of the gases in our atmosphere)
@ur momisugly Grumbles (22:57:46) :
spectroscopy, the study of the spectral lines in the spectrum perhaps.
kim (22:04:58) :
Uh, ‘permatently’ means to pitch permanently a tent.
===============
Insert comment combining common US expression “pitching a tent” with common pharmaceutical ad warning “…lasting longer than four hours, seek immediate medical attention.”
Alan the Brit (10:36:56) :
Why is it that our forefathers had greater imagination in naming planets & stars…I know there are billions of stars & (very likely 95%) zillions of planets, but surely they could use a little imagination?
Planet Gore.
It *is*, after all, a gas giant…
Robert (23:05:13) :
@ur momisugly Grumbles (22:57:46) :
spectroscopy, the study of the spectral lines in the spectrum perhaps.
From the link…
a) There are probably even more elements in the Sun that are present in such a small amount that our instruments can’t detect them. This is our sun not a different star thousands of light years away… so based on a few assumptions we accept the chemical composition (to the best of our knowledge) of our own sun.
b) The fraction of all other elements, the “heavier” elements, is small and varies considerably from 2 or 3 percent by mass in Sun-like stars to 0.1 to 0.01 percent by mass in stars found in globular clusters. So we cannot assume with any form of accuracy what this make up is, hense we don’t know the density of the star.
Please be aware I am not saying these scientists are wrong, I am aware we have great equipment for performing experiments and finding results, but you have to see the assumptions in these matters, there are many of them. We can only compare spectral results to experimentation done in our own atmosphere with known elements, to assume we can accurately extrapolate this over the universe is both a bold assumption and a “know it all” arrogancy.
Smoking Frog wrote at 21:30:02:
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.
Yeah. Some of the people here are skeptical about claims for AGW because they know what the issues are and understand how scientists should conduct research, and some of the people here are skeptical about claims for AGW because they don’t know what the issues are and don’t have a bloody clue about how science is done.
Bill Tuttle wrote at 00:06:57:
Planet Gore.
It *is*, after all, a gas giant…
Bill wins the thread!
I thought Al Gore was our ninth planet.
To Mike G. or anyone: How do you do italics? Just stick in the HTML for it? I didn’t try that, since I didn’t want to mess up my messages, but I’ll try it now.
checking to see if this is in italics
Reply: Sure looks like it. ~ctm
Grumbles (00:38:53) said:
Please be aware I am not saying these scientists are wrong, I am aware we have great equipment for performing experiments and finding results, but you have to see the assumptions in these matters, there are many of them. We can only compare spectral results to experimentation done in our own atmosphere with known elements, to assume we can accurately extrapolate this over the universe is both a bold assumption and a “know it all” arrogancy.
It’s not easy to see how that argument would avoid saying that all of science is based on a “know it all” arrogance. As far as I know, what is seen with spectroscopy is what quantum mechanics predicts, although I couldn’t prove this to you. Now suppose someone says that that quantum mechanics is a mere fitting to observations on the earth, so it might be peculiar to the earth. I have no confidence that there’s anything to which the same argument would not apply. Of course it’s possible that you were not aware of the claim that spectroscopy is justified by quantum mechanics, but this is beside the point, because your argument does seem to apply to it.
We don’t know anything, scientific or other, with God-like certainty. You seem to be assuming that science is supposed to know things with God-like certainty. That’s not true.
Mike G in Corvallis (01:05:42) said:
Yeah. Some of the people here are skeptical about claims for AGW because they know what the issues are and understand how scientists should conduct research, and some of the people here are skeptical about claims for AGW because they don’t know what the issues are and don’t have a bloody clue about how science is done.
Yes, but the latter group are showing here that they are just as “skeptical” (rejecting) of a scientific claim that has practically nothing to do with AGW. I find this remarkable because I strongly doubt that any substantial percentage of the AGW-skeptical public share their attitude. In the non-cyber world I have never heard an ordinary-person AGW skeptic say that AGW is BS, and the same goes for astronomy.
Grumbles wrote at 00:38:53:
Please be aware I am not saying these scientists are wrong, I am aware we have great equipment for performing experiments and finding results, but you have to see the assumptions in these matters, there are many of them. We can only compare spectral results to experimentation done in our own atmosphere with known elements, to assume we can accurately extrapolate this over the universe is both a bold assumption and a “know it all” arrogancy.
I assume that I’m not just a brain in a jar, and that all my impressions of the external universe aren’t just synthetic sensory inputs generated by a sophisticated computer … or by demons, take your pick. But I can’t prove this. Do you also make this same assumption? Can you prove it?
As Sonic Frog wrote:
We don’t know anything, scientific or other, with God-like certainty. You seem to be assuming that science is supposed to know things with God-like certainty. That’s not true.
Bingo.
Excuse me — Smoking Frog, not Sonic Frog …
savethesharks (22:32:31) :
No, we measure it:”
Who is “we”?
“we” is us. Humankind.
And citing anything from Goddard at this point…when they have been predicting catastrophic GISS warming…is not too effective.
What nonsense is that?
Grumbles has a point….a big point.
He has no point whatsoever.
Grumbles (22:57:46) :
NASA have never collected any of these gases from the sun and base our observations on the observations of the gases in our atmosphere)
Helium was discovered on the Sun, long before it was found on Earth. And we have collected those gases from the Sun: the Sun gives off a solar wind which streams past the Earth. Our spacecraft have directly sampled those gases in situ. Now there are two big assumptions in all this, namely that the laws of physics work the same everywhere and that reason prevails. Let go of those two, and one might descend to Grumble’s [and savetheshark’s] view.
Mike G in Corvallis (01:05:42) :
Bill wins the thread!
Better’n winning a Nobel, in my book.
But this doesn’t mean I have to give an acceptance speech, right?
St Paddy was from Youngstown, Ohio, USA
_______________________
“Patrician”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A person of exceptional education, background and refinement, an aristocrat.
member of an elite family in various countries
Patrician (Christianity), the adjective formed from St. Patrick
Youngstown Patricians, a former semi-professional football team based in Youngstown, Ohio, USA
Patrician (ancient Rome), elites in ancient Rome.
Just spent 15 minutes of quality geezer-time looking up the definition of “moby”. Got sidetracked by “mother old, baby young” acronym at first, then by the hacker “moby”, which is complimentary. Page 3 of the search results finally mentioned Cockney, which did the trick.
Gosh, this is a great site! All this science, and learning a foreign language, too!
When I was a kid (a strange little troll I was), I made up words for common things. Like this one for garbage can: “waster paster basket”. That was how I spelled it too. It never caught on though.
Only if we had started looking 15 billion years ago. And what fools we’d have felt, looking for something that didn’t exist!
Was that rocket (or solar) scientist humor?
Dr S
Have we gotten any more detailed readings of the solar wind since the failure of the Genesis mission?
Zeke the Sneak (12:08:11) :
Have we gotten any more detailed readings of the solar wind since the failure of the Genesis mission?
We don’t need the Genesis mission for this. Our other spacecraft make a mass-spectrometer measurement. No different from what can be made in the laboratory [e.g. for forensic science]. So, we count how many ions with given charge and mass enter the instrument. The fact that the counter is out in space is irrelevant for the correctness of the measurement, and is in fact just what we want for counting in situ.
“mike sphar (20:43:27) :
I’ll get more interested when someone suggests the presence of large amounts of oil on a relatively reachable exoplanet.”
You are aware that Saturn’s moon, Titan, has oceans of Natural Gas, right ?