spacetoday.net: space news from around the webin association with SpaceNews


Hubble discovers distant exoplanet's star
Posted: Fri, Aug 11, 2006, 8:37 AM ET (1237 GMT)
Microlensed exoplanet illustration (STScI) 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.
<<previous article   next article>>
news in brief
Senate hearing raises doubts of Artemis
Posted: Sat, Sep 6 8:50 AM ET (1250 GMT)

NASA names new associate administrator
Posted: Sat, Sep 6 8:46 AM ET (1246 GMT)

President Trump moves Space Command HQ to Alabama
Posted: Sat, Sep 6 8:44 AM ET (1244 GMT)

news links
Saturday, September 13
SpaceX, Northrop Grumman to launch supplies to ISS
Spectrum News — 5:52 am ET (0952 GMT)
Cornell-led space tech startup acquired by Pasteur Labs
Cornell Univ. — 5:51 am ET (0951 GMT)
How China Is Transforming Space Power
The Diplomat — 5:46 am ET (0946 GMT)


about spacetoday.net   ·   info@spacetoday.net   ·   mailing list