Views of Extrasolar Planets
- From: Sam Wormley <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:52:19 GMT
Views of Extrasolar Planets
More than 300 planets have been found outside the solar system, most of them discovered indirectly through their influence on their parent star. In the 28 Nov 2008 *Science* two groups presented the first direct observations of the infrared and optical signatures of planets orbiting distant stars that resemble our Sun. Kalas et al. (published online 13 Nov; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/322/5906/1345 ) presented Hubble Space Telescope images of a planet with a mass no more than three times that of Jupiter orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light years from Earth. Marois et al. (also published online 13 Nov; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/322/5906/1348 ) presented near-infrared images captured by the Keck and Gemini telescopes of three giant planets orbiting a star 128 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. In a podcast interview ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/322/5904/1120b ), lead author Christian Marois noted that this latter system resembles a scaled-up version of the outer portion of our solar system, with the planets' masses estimated to be between 5 and 13 times that of Jupiter. Both extrasolar systems are similar in that dusty debris disks surround the primary stars, both of which are younger, brighter, warmer, and more massive than the Sun. An accompanying Perspective by M. S. Marley ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/322/5906/1335 ) highlighted the new observations.
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