Hubble discovers distant exoplanet's star
Posted: Fri, Aug 11, 2006, 8:37 AM ET (1237 GMT)
A distant extrasolar planet discovered three years ago has now been matched up with its parent star, astronomers reported this week. the planet was discovered in 2003 through a technique called microlensing, where the gravity of a foreground star magnifies the light of a background star when the foreground star passes directly between the background star and the Earth. That magnification turned up the existence of a small companion to the background star believed to be a planet orbiting that star. The identity of the background star could not be determined, though, until the Hubble Space Telescope observed the region and was able to distinguish the star from the foreground microlensing star. the star, called OGLE-2003-BLG-235L/MOA-2003-BLG-53L, is a red dwarf with 63 percent of the mass of the Sun and is approximately 19,000 light-years away. Based on that data, astronomers determined that the exoplanet's mass is about 2.6 times that of Jupiter.
A distant extrasolar planet discovered three years ago has now been matched up with its parent star, astronomers reported this week. the planet was discovered in 2003 through a technique called microlensing, where the gravity of a foreground star magnifies the light of a background star when the foreground star passes directly between the background star and the Earth. That magnification turned up the existence of a small companion to the background star believed to be a planet orbiting that star. The identity of the background star could not be determined, though, until the Hubble Space Telescope observed the region and was able to distinguish the star from the foreground microlensing star. the star, called OGLE-2003-BLG-235L/MOA-2003-BLG-53L, is a red dwarf with 63 percent of the mass of the Sun and is approximately 19,000 light-years away. Based on that data, astronomers determined that the exoplanet's mass is about 2.6 times that of Jupiter.
Related Links:
| <<previous article | next article>> |
|
news in brief
|
|
NASA releases report on Starliner crewed test flight problems
Posted: Sun, Feb 22 11:45 AM ET (1645 GMT) |
|
news links
|
|
Friday, February 27
First glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice science camera
ESA — 7:19 am ET (1219 GMT) Space Force’s Top Guardians Share Their Stories
Air and Space Forces Magazine — 7:18 am ET (1218 GMT) Orbital Warfare Unit Gets Live Satellite to Practice Maneuvers
Air and Space Forces Magazine — 7:18 am ET (1218 GMT) US Space Force Pauses Flights on Boeing-Lockheed’s Vulcan Rocket
Bloomberg News — 7:18 am ET (1218 GMT) Dr. Gay Jane Perez takes oath as PhilSA Ad Interim Director General
Philippine Space Agency — 7:14 am ET (1214 GMT) |
