Exoplanet atmosphere detected

[docm]

http://www.physorg.com/news116259172.html<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Astronomer detects atmosphere of extra-solar planet<br /><br /><i>University of Texas at Austin astronomer and Hubble Fellow Seth Redfield has used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory to make the first ground-based detection of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.</i></b><br /><br />"It's a remarkable pioneering discovery," said McDonald Observatory Director David L. Lambert.<br /><br />The work is an incremental step in finding life in the universe, falling between the initial detections of planets around other stars (known as "extra-solar planets" or "exoplanets"), and the anticipated discovery of planets similar to Earth.<br /><br />"What we all want to find is a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere," Redfield said.<br /><br />The planet Redfield studied orbits HD189733, a star about 63 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula, the little fox. But it's not like Earth. The planet is 20 percent more massive than Jupiter, and orbits very close to its parent star (more than 10 times closer than Mercury is to our Sun).<br /><br />From Earth's line of sight, the planet passes directly in front of the star on each orbit. It was this "transit" property that allowed the planet's discovery in 2004 by Francois Bouchy of France's Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, and the detection of its atmosphere in 2007 by Redfield. His team for this project included University of Texas at Austin astronomers Michael Endl, William Cochran and Lars Kosterke.<br /><br />That means this planet, HD189733b, is what's known as a "transiting extra-solar planet."<br /><br />Astronomers have only once before detected the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star in such a way, using a now inoperable instrument on Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STI</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alkalin]

It seems to me your idea might work for those planets that do not transit the star from our view of them. Anyone working this approach?

 

[alokmohan]

The exoplanet is too large to be called earth like.So I see no hope of migrating.

 

[franontanaya]

Hum, and what about crossing fingers for (not own) star occultations? Would they be really noticeable from here? It would be awesome, seeing a planet eclipsing a very distant star, and maybe finding the spectra change for that tiny timespan when it crosses behind the atmosphere. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

You mean it is not possible?

 

[franontanaya]

Wait, they said they detected sodium...<br /><br />You know, Jupiter's magnetosphere is contaminated with sodium by Io's vulcanism. What would be awesome would be to find traces of contamination from moons in the atmosphere of those giants. At some point we should be able to say what one would expect to find on the upper atmosphere of a giant of this size at that distance, and then trace exotic elements that could be seeded by those moons. You know, if we lived in Sirius and saw traces of Io's vulcanism mixed with the signature of Jupiter's atmosphere, we could tell some of those didn't belong there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[h2ouniverse]

I know it's unlikely for such a close planet (to its star) to have atmosphered-moons, but what if it was the atmosphere of a rocky moon that they detected, not the one of the primary?

 

[docm]

If Hubble has taught us anything it's that preconceived notions are very often incorrect, so who's to say what's possible and impossible? We need to open our minds and follow the observations where they lead. If that's to close-in planets & moons with atmospheres then so be it. They are after all "alien", right? <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

We should follow own observation.