The Best Transiting Exoplanet Yet

[eosophobiac]

Anybody going to try observing this? I think it'd be really interesting to try!<br /><br /><br />By Robert Naeye<br /> October 6, 2005 | The European planet-hunting team founded by Michel Mayor (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland) has just announced a new extrasolar planet that crosses the face of its host star — the ninth transiting exoplanet found to date. But this planet is special. The planet, which orbits the 7.7-magnitude type-K star HD 189733 in Vulpecula, offers professional astronomers their best prospects for studying an exoplanet's atmosphere and temperature. It also gives amateurs their easiest opportunity to detect a world orbiting another star. Moreover, the host star is located just 0.3° from the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), ideally positioned for Northern Hemisphere observers during early evening this season. <br />Using the 1.9-meter telescope at the Haute-Provence Observatory in France, Mayor's group used the radial-velocity method to discover the planet's gravitational tug on its host star. These observations not only revealed the planet, they also indicated that the planet periodically blocks some of the star's light. Follow-up observations with Haute-Provence's 1.2-meter telescope confirmed the transits (which last 2 hours) and the fact that <b>the star's brightness drops by a whopping 3 percent (0.03 magnitude)</b> every time the planet crosses the star's disk. These are the deepest exoplanet transits yet seen.<br /><br />More here: http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1606_1.asp<br /><br />The article goes on to say: First, its incredibly tight orbit means transits occur frequently. Second, the 3 percent brightness decrease (due to the planet's relatively large size with respect to the star) makes transits easy to detect. Third, the star is bright, being only 63 light-years from Earth, which means astronomers can achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio in their observations. Fourth <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>