Four New Exoplanets to Start Off the New Year!
We're close to finding another Earth
It’s only a few days into 2012 and already some new exoplanet discoveries have been announced. As 2011 ended, there were a total of 716 confirmed exoplanets and 2,326 planetary candidates, found by both orbiting space telescopes like Kepler and ground-based observatories. The pace of new discoveries has accelerated enormously in the past few years. Now there are four more confirmed exoplanets to add to the list.
The four planets, HAT-P-34b, HAT-P-35b, HAT-P-36b, HAT-P-37b all have very tight orbits around their (four different) stars, taking only 5.5, 3.6, 1.3 and 2.8 days to complete an orbit. Compare that to Mercury, which takes 87.969 days and 365 days of course for Earth.
They were found by astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics which operates a network of ground-based telescopes known as the HATNet project. The first exoplanet discovery by HATNet, the planet HAT-P-1b, was in 2006.
Image via Wikipedia
They are all “hot jupiter” type planets, gas giants which orbit very close to their stars and so are much hotter than Earth, like Mercury in our own solar system. Mercury though, of course, is a small rocky world, but in some alien solar systems, gas giants have been found orbiting just as close to their stars, or even closer, than Mercury does here. HAT-P-34b however, may have an “outer component” and is in a very elongated orbit.
The other three are more typical hot Jupiters. They were discovered using the transit method, when a planet is aligned in its orbit so that it passes in front of its star, from our viewpoint.
So what does this mean? If exoplanet discoveries continue to grow exponentially as expected, then 2012 should be a good year, not only for yet more new planets being found, but also for our understanding of these alien worlds and how such a wide variety of solar systems came to be. We’ve come a long way from 1992 and the first exoplanet discoveries and things promise to only get more exciting in the future.
If you want to get your exoplanet news quickly this year, I recommend the Exoplanet App for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. You can also follow @ExoplanetApp on Twitter.
Nasa Debuts Its New Video Program On Nasa Tv And The Web
NASA launched a new high definition (HD) video program called “Destination Innovation” on Friday, Jan. 6 2012, that will air on NASA Television today at 1 p.m. PST. The program will also be featured on the agency’s website, YouTube, Facebook and NASA¹s apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
The 10-minute program is filmed and produced by the video team at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, which is located in California¹s Silicon Valley. Ames plays a critical role in virtually all NASA aeronautical and space exploration endeavors, conducting the research and developing the technologies that enable NASA missions.
“A lot of amazing work for the agency is being done at NASA Ames,” said Ed Schilling, the show¹s producer. “Destination Innovation will showcase not only Ames, but the agency. We¹re looking forward to sharing our stories with a larger audience.”
Destination Innovation is part of the NASA eClips project that provides free NASA educational video content for the web. The pilot episode features NASA¹s Kepler mission. Ames is the lead center for Kepler¹s search for Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of an orbiting planet. More programs will be added in the coming months. Source; Universe Today
Related articles
- Little Exoplanets Found In Tiny Solar System (wired.com)
- The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog: A database of habitable worlds (scienceblog.com)
