32 NEW PLANETS IN OTHER SOLAR SYSTEMS ARE DISCOVERED - REVEAL HOW PLANETS ARE FORMED - LIFE APART FROM US
32 new Planets are discovered in 2009 The smallest is five times the size of the earth
This picture taken in January 2009 illustrate the eksoplanet HD80606b which is around 200 lightyears away from earth. European astronomers disclosed that they had discovered 32 new previously unkown eksoplanets orbiting other stars than our own sun. Photo: Scanpix/AFP PHOTO / NASA / Spitzer Space Telescope
HD 80606 b is a superjovian planet (Eccentric Jupiter) 190 light-years distant in the constellation of Ursa Major. The planet was discovered orbiting the star HD 80606 in April 2001 by a team led by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Based on its mass, at 4 times that of Jupiter, it is a gas giant. Since the planet transits its star, its radius is determined to be at 73,560 km (slightly larger than planet Jupiter).
The planet has wild variations in its weather as it orbits its parent star. Computer models predict the planet heats up 555 °C (1,000 °F) in just a matter of hours triggering "shockwave storms" with winds that move faster than the speed of sound
Teach a child to play solitaire, and she’ll be able to entertain herself when there’s no one around. Teach her tennis, and she’ll know what to do when she’s on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home.
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
European astronomers have up till now discovered 32 previously unknown plants orbiting other stars than our own sun. The number of eksoplanets is then up to over 400 at the moment.
The smalles of the newly discovered eksoplanets is around 5 times the size of the earth, while the largest is around 5 times larger than our solar system planet Jupiter which is the largest plant in our own solarsystem.
This was revealed at a statement given by the European Space Agency astronomers this Monday.
The astronomers stated that more than 40 percent of the stars looking like our own sun have planets with small masses.
The new observations have given the astronomers a large insight into the variety of planet systems. Nuno Santos, one of the project researchers stated that this helps us to understand how planets are formed- De nye observasjonene har gitt astronomene stor innsikt i planetsystemets mangfold.
It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astrĉa,... for the slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. By such slow aggregation has mythology grown from the first.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
The astonomers used HARPS, which is a special designed instrument at the European observatory in Chile to map the new eksoplanets.
This instrument gives the researchers the chance to calculate the size and mass of objects observed and discovered in the Universe.
HARPS WEB SITE
HARPS is a spectrometer dedicated to the search for extrasolar planets by means of the technique of precise radial velocity measurement. HARPS is developped by a consortium headed by the Geneva Observatory. It is installed at the Coude room of the 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla, with an optical fiber link to the Cassegrain focus.
He has a background as civil engineer and geoscientist. He has worked mainly within the oil and gas industry from the mid 1980s. He has written a few fictional novels as well as being the author of some professional litterature within oil and gas sector, he is now an editor of some web sites.