| Subject: Modest "hobbyist" telescope discovers new planet |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 10:45:09 08/28/04 Sat
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "Hubbble telescope to die & be destoyed" on 12:26:05 02/15/04 Sun
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A tiny telescope has spotted a giant planet circling a faraway star, using a technique that could open a new phase of planetary discovery, scientists said Tuesday.
A telescope with a 4-inch diameter -- about the size that some backyard astronomers might use -- tracked the periodic dimming of light from a bright star 500 light-years away. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
That dimming suggested the presence of a big planet regularly blocking out a small portion of the light as it passed between the star and Earth. Later observations by the huge Keck I telescope in Hawaii, which has a diameter of 32.81 feet, confirmed the find.
More than 100 such exoplanets, or planets orbiting a star other than our sun, have been found in the last decade, but most of these have been discovered by observing stars that have a characteristic wobble, indicating a planet is nearby.
The small telescope that found this latest planet is part of a network of modest instruments called the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, known as TrES, which is designed to look specifically for planets orbiting bright stars, scientists said in e-mailed statements.
One statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said the new find, using such a small telescope, "demonstrates that we are at the cusp of a new age of planet discovery."
The new planet, called TrES-1, is a gas giant about the size of Jupiter, located in the constellation Lyra ("the lyre"). It orbits its star about once every three days at a distance of just 4 million miles, much closer and faster than the planet Mercury goes around our sun, giving it a temperature of around 1,500 degrees F.
"This discovery demonstrates that even humble telescopes can make huge contributions to planet searches," said Guillermo Torres of the Harvard astrophysics center, who coauthor a study on the finding.
The team that discovered TrES-1 includes scientists from the Astrophysical Institute of the Canaries, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Lowell Observatory and the California Institute of Technology.
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