Gemini: First Directly Imaged Planet Confirmed

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bystander
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Gemini: First Directly Imaged Planet Confirmed

Post by bystander » Tue Jun 29, 2010 4:29 pm

First Directly Imaged Planet Confirmed Around Sun-like Star
Gemini Observatory - 29 June 2010
A planet only about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed orbiting a Sun-like star at over 300 times farther from the star than the Earth is from our Sun. The newly confirmed planet is the least massive planet known to orbit at such a great distance from its host star. The discovery utilized high-resolution adaptive optics technology at the Gemini Observatory to take direct images and spectra of the planet.

First reported in September 2008 by a team led by David Lafrenière (then at the University of Toronto, now at the University of Montreal and Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec), the suspected planetary system required further observations over time to confirm that the planet and star were indeed moving through space together. “Back in 2008 what we knew for sure was that there was this young planetary mass object sitting right next to a young Sun-like star on the sky,” says Lafrenière. The extremely close proximity of the two objects strongly suggested that they were associated with each other but it was still possible (but unlikely) that they were unrelated and only aligned by chance in the sky. According to Lafrenière, “Our new observations rule out this chance alignment possibility, and thus confirms that the planet and the star are related to each other.”
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The result has been accepted for publication (see preprint here) in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
First Picture of Likely Planet around Sun-like Star
Gemini Observatory - 15 Sept 2008
Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun.
The Directly Imaged Planet around the Young Solar Analog 1RXS J160929.1-210524:
Confirmation of Common Proper Motion, Temperature and Mass
Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Planetary Mass Candidate Companion to a Young Solar Analog
  • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:0809.1424 > 08 Sep 2008 (v1), 24 Oct 2008 (v2)

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RJN
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Re: Gemini: First Directly Imaged Planet Confirmed

Post by RJN » Tue Jun 29, 2010 5:08 pm


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