Overlooked Treasure: The First Evidence of Exoplanets

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Overlooked Treasure: The First Evidence of Exoplanets

Post by bystander » Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:11 pm

Interesting article

Overlooked Treasure: The First Evidence of Exoplanets
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Exoplanet Exploration | 2017 Nov 02
[img3="Polluted White Dwarf -- Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech"]https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/im ... _hires.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
Beneath an elegant office building with a Spanish-style red tiled roof in Pasadena, California, three timeworn storerooms safeguard more than a century of astronomy. Down the stairs and to the right is a basement of wonder. There are countless wooden drawers and boxes, stacked floor to ceiling, with telescope plates, sunspot drawings and other records. A faint ammonia-like smell, reminiscent of old film, fills the air.

Guarding one storeroom is a short black door with a sign saying "This door to be kept closed."

Carnegie Observatories hosts 250,000 photographic plates taken at Mount Wilson, Palomar and Las Campanas observatories, spanning more than 100 years. In their heydays, the Mount Wilson 60-inch and 100-inch telescopes -- the bigger saw its first light on Nov. 1, 1917 -- were the most powerful instruments of their kind. Each indelibly changed humanity's understanding of our place in the cosmos. But these technological marvels were ahead of their time -- in one case, capturing signs of distant worlds that wouldn't be recognized for a century. ...

But there is a far lesser known, 100-year-old discovery from Mount Wilson, one that was unidentified and unappreciated until recently. It's actually: The first evidence of exoplanets. ...
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— Garrison Keillor

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