Other Worlds - Literally!

[yaralindi]

This picture was taken with just a 4.5 foot mirror telescope. It used adaptive optics (warping the lens at just the right frequency to get rid of the twinkle, twinkle of the star) and a coronograph (focuses the light of the star into a tiny point but leave the planets behind because of the angle of the light for star or planet). The planets shown are like Jupiter but many times larger and they orbit at a much greater distance from their sun.

Imagine what they will be able to do when they have fitted this to say a 10 foot telescope or even a 30 foot. We could one day literally look at the oceans of a new world orbiting a distant sun!

[Harthad]

Wow. That's so cool. But where's planet a?

[yaralindi]

But where's planet a?

Planet A is the initial planet that is declared when a sun is found to have one. When it is discovered that there are multiples instead, that leads to different orbits and thus to different designations.

We have some company selling certificates that claim to name stars after people. I wonder how long it will be before there is a company that claims they will register a certificate in the Library of Congress for one of these planets with your loved one's name attached?

"You can't name a planet Bob?"

"So now you're the boss. You're the King of Bob."

[Ringwraith-Wife]

When I was a kid, I truly wanted to be either an artist, a paleontologist, an archeologist or an astronomer.
I was such a science fiction geek & believer that I thought by this time in my life, I would at least be taking trips to the moon, and getting true life tales back from other planets. The photos from Hubble were as close as I got, or will get, to the stars. ( Ad Astra, indeed. )
I would so like to see the images that you described. The Oceans of a New World. What could be cooler than that? Thanks, Yaralindi.

[yaralindi]

I would so like to see the images that you described. The Oceans of a New World. What could be cooler than that? Thanks, Yaralindi.

This stuff is so young, so new. The first exoplanet wasn't confirmed until 1992. Since then we've discovered over 300 of them! Most of them are systems with multiple planets. It was only in the last few years that we were able to detect planets smaller than Jupiter. Look how far we've come in just 18 years, though!

The first confirmed one was a list of data points on a piece of paper. That was true all the way up until 2002. We've been imaging at a distance since then, but not like what's above.

The Keplar telescope is due to launch into space soon and I know NASA was working on a telescope that would hang between the Earth and Mars that is supposed to be 10 times larger than Hubble. It is specifically being designed to image exoplanets. With tools like what was used above, I see no reason why we should not be able to at least make out clouds on these new planets with something that big.

[Ringwraith-Wife]

The Keplar telescope is due to launch into space soon and I know NASA was working on a telescope that would hang between the Earth and Mars that is supposed to be 10 times larger than Hubble. It is specifically being designed to image exoplanets. With tools like what was used above, I see no reason why we should not be able to at least make out clouds on these new planets with something that big.

Now, you've got me all excited! It could happen. Soon. ( I'll only dance for a little bit... but I'll pay attention. Thanks, again.)

[yaralindi]

Okay, more fun with other worlds.


Reconstructed images showing the progression of the 2009-2010 eclipse of Epsilon Aurigae
John D. Monnier, University of Michigan

The above image sequence is of a star that is being eclipsed by something we can't explain. The best "guess" we have is that it is a large circular dust cloud that is tilted at an angle to us, but its orbit would have to be so horribly eccentric that it would literally be a statistical impossibility. For example, as it swings around on the far side in its 27 year journey around this star, this dust cloud should be illuminated by this star so that we can see it. It is not. This can only happen if there is say a neutron star nearby that warps the orbit of the cloud such that instead of orbiting straight around behind it dips down and behind the neutron star then back out in a sort of figure 8 thing so there is never any light on it at all.

Or, the cloud orbits something else nearby that isn't perturbing any of its other neighbors.

Or, the cloud is just orbiting out there without anything to orbit.

Or, its not a cloud at all but something else entirely. Any science fiction fans want to hazard a guess what this could be?

(BTW, there is a citizen participation project for those interested in helping work on discovering exactly what is happening in this strange system. Citizen Sky)

[Harthad]

Or, its not a cloud at all but something else entirely. Any science fiction fans want to hazard a guess what this could be?

The TARDIS!

[yaralindi]

The TARDIS!

I supposed it could be Tom Baker's (Doctor Who #4) Hat. We never did find out what happened to that thing.

[yaralindi]

Okay, more celestial puzzles for your consideration.

Quasars are extremely energetic bodies that are believed to be galaxies with active supermassive black holes at their centers gobbling up whole chunks of the center of the galaxy. Imagine being on a planet a few hundred light years away watching thousands of stars fall down into the mouth of that endless black pit knowing that your star is so close that you cannot escape. In just a few hundred thousand years, your star system too will plunge into the mouth of that thing! But, I digress.

Quasars are known. We've counted over 200,000 of the things. We also know the frequency of the light that should be shooting out of them and can use that to calculate how far away they are - anywhere from 800 million to 28 billion light years away.

Another property of quasars is they blink. There light intensifies and dims at a steady, clock-like rate. So, enter Mike Hawking of the University of Edinburgh. He was looking for another way of gaging the distance of these galaxies besides the frequency of the light they put out and this constant blink seemed ideally suited. You see Einstein has this little theory that states that as object move away from each other time slows down. This should have meant that the blink for the more distant stars was different than the blink for closer stars since our speed relative to one another is different. What he found, however, is that they are all exactly the same.

So, this could mean that the universe is not expanding at all and all the hundreds of other measurements that we've done showing us that it is are wrong. It could also mean that Einstein is not right and time does not dilate as relative speed changes despite all of our measurements to the contrary. OR, it could mean quazars are NOT supermassive black holes gobbling up everything around them.

If they are not that, what are they and how do they produce all that energy?

[yaralindi]

Okay, here's a good mystery. This is part of a gas cloud in the constellation Orion named NGC 1999.



For a very long time astronomers thought the dark spot was a region of very dense gas but when they pointed their infrared telescopes at it, which can see through very dense clouds, it still looked the same. That means it is a BIG (light years across) hole punched right through a monstrously big gas cloud in space.

Now what could have caused something like that?

[daughter_of_kings]

Another property of quasars is they blink. There light intensifies and dims at a steady, clock-like rate. So, enter Mike Hawking of the University of Edinburgh. He was looking for another way of gaging the distance of these galaxies besides the frequency of the light they put out and this constant blink seemed ideally suited. You see Einstein has this little theory that states that as object move away from each other time slows down. This should have meant that the blink for the more distant stars was different than the blink for closer stars since our speed relative to one another is different. What he found, however, is that they are all exactly the same.

Could it be that the Universe was indeed sung into being, and that what we are seeing when quasars blink is the rhythm of the Song of the Ainur?

Probably not, but it is nice to think about.

[yaralindi]

Hint of life on Saturn's moon Titan

<snip>

Scientists have found evidence that there is life on Saturn's biggest moon, Titan.

They have discovered clues that primitive aliens are breathing in Titan's atmosphere and feeding on fuel at the surface.

</snip>

It's not definitive proof, but it is intriguing evidence that life may exist in our solar system other than on Earth. Imagine methane-breathing life that "eats" the acetylene that rains down from the upper atmosphere. Other animals would then consume this life and a chain of life would exist. It is the stuff of science fiction, but also of science and could very well be happening right in our own solar system.

If these reports don't lead to landers heading to Titan, we've lost any ability of saying we have a viable space program.