APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

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APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by APOD Robot » Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:06 am

Image The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086

Explanation: What do other star systems look like? To help find out, astronomers are carrying out detailed observations of nearby stars in infrared light to see which have dust disks that might be forming planets. Observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have found that planetary system HD 95086 has two dust disks: a hot one near the parent star and a cooler one farther out. An artist's illustration of how the system might appear is featured here, including hypothetical planets with large rings that orbit between the disks. The planets may have created the large gap between the disks by absorbing and deflecting dust with their gravity. HD 95086 is a blue star about 60 percent more massive than our Sun that lies about 300 light years from Earth and is visible with binoculars toward the constellation of Carina. Studying the HD 95086 system may help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of our own Solar System as well as the Earth.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by bystander » Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:54 am

Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by monarchist » Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:14 am

Well it doesn't look like this. The "artist" is a lousy one, and doesn't have the slightest clue about what a solar system looks like. This isn't even as good as stuff drawn in the middle ages.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Ann » Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:22 am

It's fascinating to see the similarity between the huge disk of the star and the small disks of the planets. It's tempting to see the rings of Saturn as the remnants of such a primordial planetary disk.

One thing that made me groan a little is that the caption said that HD 95086 is a blue star, but in the illustration, it is shown as yellow.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by geckzilla » Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:58 am

monarchist wrote:Well it doesn't look like this. The "artist" is a lousy one, and doesn't have the slightest clue about what a solar system looks like. This isn't even as good as stuff drawn in the middle ages.
You should tell us what's wrong with it specifically.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by rj rl » Mon Nov 17, 2014 7:11 am

Apart from the scale it looks ok. Also two of such young planets are already tilted versus the ecliptic plane, obviously only to add dramatic effect.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by CharlesE » Mon Nov 17, 2014 10:25 am

Should not the shadows of the three planets get narrower futher out from the planets?

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by henrystar » Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:48 pm

monarchist wrote:Well it doesn't look like this. The "artist" is a lousy one, and doesn't have the slightest clue about what a solar system looks like. This isn't even as good as stuff drawn in the middle ages.
I surely do agree! Planets as big as a star, and all three with vast ring systems! Artists try, but truth is so much better!

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by starsurfer » Mon Nov 17, 2014 2:34 pm

Ann wrote:It's fascinating to see the similarity between the huge disk of the star and the small disks of the planets. It's tempting to see the rings of Saturn as the remnants of such a primordial planetary disk.

One thing that made me groan a little is that the caption said that HD 95086 is a blue star, but in the illustration, it is shown as yellow.

Ann
The light of the star has probably been reddened by dust making it appear yellow.

Also to all the negative people, this isn't a representation of a solar system like ours but one that is in the early stages of forming.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by rstevenson » Mon Nov 17, 2014 2:39 pm

It's so very rare that I dislike an APOD that I must analyse why I dislike this one so much. I think it's the almost cartoonish scale of the planets that is the problem. But what does the math say? ...

Following the link from the other thread to the original article, I find this illustration of that stellar system...
hd95086_schem_horizontal_white.jpg
As you can see, those planets are supposed to be somewhere between about 7 AUs to 70 AUs from the star. An AU (Astronomical Unit) is about 150,000,000 km, so the planets are somewhere between 1.05 x 10^8 km and 1.05 x 10^9 km from the star.

The planets themselves are described in the article as possibly being 5 to 7 times the mass of Jupiter. Mass and size are tricky to relate for gas giants, since increased mass won't necessarily mean a similar increase in size, due to compression of the gases. So I think I'll just go with a bit more than Jupiter-sized, which gives us a diameter of about 1.5 x 10^5 km. So the planets should appear to be very roughly 1/700 to 1/7000 of the width of the dust gap in size. Of course, the artist can't very well illustrate them that size, because they'd be at most a single pixel on screen, but making them look like Christmas tree decorations floating in a whirlpool isn't a good option either.

I think, in this case, it would have been a more honest representation of our current state of knowledge to just make them small dots, say a few pixels wide, just barely big enough to indicate where they were perhaps orbitting, and leave off the entirely conjectural ring systems. After all, the main story is the double dust ring itself, and that's certainly worthy of a serious illustration.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 17, 2014 3:00 pm

geckzilla wrote:
monarchist wrote:Well it doesn't look like this. The "artist" is a lousy one, and doesn't have the slightest clue about what a solar system looks like. This isn't even as good as stuff drawn in the middle ages.
You should tell us what's wrong with it specifically.
This may, indeed, be the worst "artist concept" image I've every seen on APOD. The scales are distorted absurdly. The dust density is wrong. The shadows are wrong. The stellar-sized ringed planets are ludicrous.

I give APOD lots of latitude, but this one is just plain horrible. It could have worked as a diagram, but then the effort to paint in some realism just makes it as unrealistic as anything could be. I'm afraid this one actually results in people walking away with bad information and a poorer knowledge of the Universe.
Chris

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 17, 2014 3:16 pm

rstevenson wrote:I think, in this case, it would have been a more honest representation of our current state of knowledge to just make them small dots, say a few pixels wide, just barely big enough to indicate where they were perhaps orbitting, and leave off the entirely conjectural ring systems.
Or to avoid any attempt at realism and create a well-designed graphic. That would be my choice.

You always see this same error in science fiction films, where lots of planets are visible from the edge of a star system. In reality, I doubt there is any system where you could see more than one planet at a time as an obvious extended body, with the others being largely indistinguishable from stars. But even in the movies, they use perspective to make the more distant planets appear smaller. Today's image doesn't even do that.
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Ron-Astro Pharmacist » Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:26 pm

I don't want to pile on the negative comments because I like the attempts try to visualize what we cannot yet see in order to stimulate the imagination. But when I first opened the link I thought the artist had originally photographed a disc of ice with snow blown out from the center with Saturn-jacks and some sugar granules thrown down to simulate stars and planets.

Fortunately upon closer viewing, this wasn't the case. The sun and central disc with its faint jets is well done and the technic with the background stars and peripheral disc is quite unique. I'd be curious to know if the artist of today's APOD used a new process in order to try to capture this newly forming system or if it was just a good thought gone bad in ways previously pointed out?

Either way, keep up the efforts to fuel our thoughts as Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Rothkko » Mon Nov 17, 2014 7:35 pm

el letrero es bien grande: artist's concept, es una discusión estéril. la mayoría de los seguidores de apod, que no somos físicos, ni astrónomos, ni astrofísicos, ni cosmólogos, así lo hemos entendido.
the sign is very large: artist's concept, is a sterile discussion. most followers apod, we are not physical, nor astronomers or astrophysicists or cosmologists, so we understand.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:16 pm

Rothkko wrote:the sign is very large: artist's concept, is a sterile discussion. most followers apod, we are not physical, nor astronomers or astrophysicists or cosmologists, so we understand.
Understand what? The complaint here is that the image doesn't come close to portraying anything real, anything we could ever see or image. It distorts reality rather than clarifying it.
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by bystander » Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:26 pm

Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Rothkko » Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:41 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: Understand what? The complaint here is that the image doesn't come close to portraying anything real, anything we could ever see or image. It distorts reality rather than clarifying it.
su realidad, la realidad de "Spitzer Space Telescope, JPL, NASA"... la realidad es http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141110.html
your reality, the reality of 'Spitzer Space Telescope, JPL, NASA'... the reality is http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141110.html

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Rothkko » Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:57 pm

gracias a trabajos como este apod, y muchos otros, he conseguido hacerme una idea, seguramente muy aproximada, de cómo se formaron los planetas de nuestro sistema solar. pero unas piezas no encajan en el puzzle: las grandes lunas de los planetas gigantes exteriores, Ganimedes, Titán, Titania: ¿se formaron lejos de ellos y después fueron robadas? ¿se formaron en torno a ellos, como en un pequeño sistema solar?

thanks to works as this apod, and different many, I have managed to do an idea to me, surely very approximate, of how there were formed the planets of our solar system. but some pieces do not fit the puzzle: the large moons of the outer giant planets, Ganymede, Titan Titania: formed away from them and then they were stolen? Did formed around them, like a small solar system?

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by cahethel » Tue Nov 18, 2014 5:57 am

Rothkko wrote:surely very approximate
I will have to soundly disagree, it's very far from "very approximate". Actually, I'm having a very hard time trying to understand how this picture was used by JPL, I thought it was from some random APOD fan.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Nov 18, 2014 6:01 am

Rothkko wrote:but some pieces do not fit the puzzle: the large moons of the outer giant planets, Ganymede, Titan Titania: formed away from them and then they were stolen? Did formed around them, like a small solar system?
It is generally believed that most of the moons of the gas giants formed in place as the planets were forming, but that a few are later captures.
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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Rothkko » Tue Nov 18, 2014 7:29 am

cahethel wrote:
I will have to soundly disagree, it's very far from "very approximate"
la expresión "muy aproximada" en castellano es ambigua. yo la utilicé en el sentido de "muy lejana a la realidad"
the "muy aproximada" is ambiguous expression in Castilian. I used it to mean 'far removed from reality'
Last edited by Rothkko on Tue Nov 18, 2014 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by Rothkko » Tue Nov 18, 2014 7:31 am

Chris Peterson wrote: It is generally believed that most of the moons of the gas giants formed in place as the planets were forming, but that a few are later captures.
thanks

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Re: APOD: The Double Dust Disks of HD 95086 (2014 Nov 17)

Post by DavidLeodis » Tue Nov 18, 2014 1:16 pm

I like the constellations map that is brought up through the "constellation" link and I particularly like the 'Heavenly Waters' family name. :P

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