6 new extra solar planets

[thnkrx]

Straight from the `Encyclopedia of Extra Solar Planets'<br /><br />HD 2638, G5 star 53.7 parsecs off- a hot jupiter, 3.44 day orbit, 0.48 jupiters mass.<br /><br />HD 27894, K2V star 42.4 parsecs off - a second hot jupiter, with a 18 day orbit and .38 jupiters mass.<br /><br />HD 63454, a K4V star 35.8 parsecs off - a red hot jupiter, with a orbital period of 2.8 days, amd 0.37 jupiters mass.<br /><br />HD 93083. a K3V star 28.9 parsecs off - a warmish planet with a 143.6day orbit and 0.37 jupiters mass.<br /><br />HD 101930, a K1V star 30.5 parsecs off - another warmish planet with a 70.5 day orbit and 0.3 jupiters mass.<br /><br />HD 142022, a K0V star 35.9 parsecs off, with a erratic planet (eccentricity 0.57) a 1923 day (5.27 year) orbit, and a mass of a whopping 4.4 jupiters.<br /><br />Hmm...except for the last planet, these worlds are all fairly small, as extra solar planets go...less massive than Saturn, getting almost down into the Uranus/Neptune range. An improvement in techniques, perhaps?<br /><br />Of interest...K class stars, as a general rule, are only about 1/3 the luminosity of Sol. Does this mean that the brighter G type stars have been `picked over'? This lower luminosity might mean that the two `warm jupiters' (HD 93083 & HD 101930) are actually in those stars habitable zones. <br /><br />Also, all of these stars look to have pretty high metallicities - something on the order of 30-100% greater than that of sol .

 

[thalion]

^<br />I'm guessing the G-stars with easily-found companions have probably been gone through. Those with smaller planets, or planets in farther orbits that take a longer time to confirm are probably in good supply, though.<br /><br />The correlation between high metallicity and likelihood of finding a planet has been big news for a while, now. Our own Sun is rather metal-rich compared to most of the stars in our neighborhood.

 

[redracer02]

Add another 6 for a total of 12 in the last couple of weeks.<br /><br />http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html<br /><br />

 

[thnkrx]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Add another 6 for a total of 12 in the last couple of weeks. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Actually, it looks like the same six I posted earlier. At the rate new extra solar planets are turning up, though, I kindof wonder if they may not break 200 by years end - or at least within two more years, anyhow.<br /><br />

 

[astrophoto]

I look forward to the launch of SIM. I hope we are not disappointed by the limited (~250 star) survey of stars at 1uas accuracy. 3uas for ~2000 isn't bad, but the general public wants Earth-class planets, not more Neptunes.

 

[thalion]

I'm looking forward to both Kepler, but especially SIM and Gaia. That said, I don't think even SIM will be able to detect earthlike planets astrometrically; Kepler will have a better shot IMO, with finds we can hopefully follow up on from the ground or later space observatories. <br /><br />If Kepler doesn't find any terrestrial planets, I think a true earthlike planet find will have to wait for a direct imaging mission like TPF, unless we find one orbiting a gas giant. However, we may have a better chance of finding terrestrials with SIM around lower mass stars, I think.