[X] My Assistant

[dtolman]

Hubble may be on the blink, but the data analysis and discoveries roll on:

Hubble Announces A Major Extrasolar Planet Discovery


WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a Science Update to report on a significant discovery about planets orbiting other stars at 2:30 p.m. EST, Thursday, Nov. 13, in NASA's James E. Webb auditorium. This unique discovery, made by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advance Camera for Surveys instrument, also will be featured in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science.

The briefing participants are:
-- Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington
-- Sara Seager, associate professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
-- Paul Kalas, assistant adjunct professor, Physics and Astronomy Department, University of California at Berkeley.
-- Mark Clampin, James Webb Space Telescope Observatory project scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
-- Marc Kuchner, exoplanet scientist, Astrophysics Science Division, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Reporters attending the event will have an opportunity to ask questions. News media representatives not attending will be able to ask questions via teleconference. To participate in the teleconference, reporters must email a request for dial-in information that includes their media affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington at j.d.harrington@nasa.gov by 1 p.m. EST, Nov. 13.

[ElkGroveDan]

EDIT: It looks like the Keck press release and images has been taken down.

Maybe someone can dig the image out of their cache. I can't figure out where anything is on the Vista system I'm running here.

[Hungry4info]

I printed it out, but didn't think to save it to the hard drive. =(.

And no, the HST release isn't as good as this Keck release.

[dtolman]

Looks like Keck pulled the whole thing off the website - maybe the didn't realize that the Hubble announcement was today, and felt bad about stepping on toes?

[Tman]

From another source:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[dtolman]

An overseas press site screwed up the embargo... If you want to be spoiled:
Its gratifying to know that the research and data parsing skills they taught me in High School still aren't failing me, my initial prediction was spot on. Hubble snaps a pic of a planet orbiting Fomalhaut during Paul Kalas's observation campaign. Goto google news, and search for the terms keck and extrasolar.

Oh those poor Hubble scientists... definitely a cool announcement but man, Keck really stole their thunder.

For Paul Kalas's sake, I'll pretend not to know about the Keck one, so his personal research triumph can have a few moments to shine. It really is a great discovery, and he'll always be able to say that he got in this particular first...

[Stu]

Three planets circling a naked eye star I'll be able to see from my backyard tonight... wonderful, just wonderful...

GLORIOUS times we live in!

[Stu]

Some more on this from Phil P...

[dtolman]

The gemini press release is up - better than the late Keck one, imho.

http://www.gemini.edu/node/11151

...

and the Hubble announcement is up now too!
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/s.../fomalhaut.html


Daniel

[Pavel]

This summarizes all announcements:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0811...-exoplanet.html

[john_s]

I'd say the Hubble discovery is just as spectacular as the Keck/Gemini discovery. It's a smaller planet (3 Jupiter masses rather than 6-10 Jupiter masses for the Keck/Gemini planets, assuming all those numbers are reliable), and is thus more like those in our own solar system, and it's seen in reflected light rather than by its internal heat radiation, which provides a whole different way to study it (if it has water ice rings, for instance, we might be able to detect them spectroscopically).

Both results are amazing, anyway.

John.

[stevesliva]

Is that Formalhaut or the Eye of Sauron?

Very cool discoveries.

[ngunn]

So we have a system of 3 hot planets detected by their intrinsic IR (Gemini/Keck), and a single (somewhat smaller?) planet imaged by the visible light from it's parent star, but probably with a large contribution from light scattered by a surrounding moon-forming disc or ring close to the planet. One has to question whether this planet could have been detected by light reflected from it's globe alone.

Has anyone got information on the object's visual magnitude, or of what magnitude would have been expected from simple reflection off a globe at that distance from Fomalhaut?

These are both giant steps, but there are still plenty of 'firsts' left for others to claim in future as more wonderful results come in.

[Stu]

All the Hbbble images (and videos) of Fomalhaut you could want, right here...

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0821.html

[Hungry4info]

Well I was certainly wrong.
I underestimated HST. I wasn't aware it could do that
Very awesome discovery (both of them).

[nprev]

Delighted to be not at all underwhelmed!!! We have all at least lived long enough to actually see the worlds of other stars, the first such in all our history. THAT is humbling.