Exoplanets seen orbiting alien sun for first time.
For the first time in history, a telescope has directly observed the orbital motion of planets in a solar system other than our own.
Using the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii, Dr. Christian Marois of Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics photographed the star HR 8799 periodically between 2009 and 2015. Jason Wang of UC Berkeley combined the eight images into an animation showing the relative motion of the star’s four planets. The planet closest to the star has an orbital period of 40 Earth years, while the furthest away is over 400. Three of the four planets were photographed directly in 2008, and were among the first exoplanets to be directly imaged. Because exoplanets are so far away from our solar system, light from their parent star is too bright to separate them in telescopic observations. Only recently has technology been developed to block out the parent star’s light. UC Berkeley is part of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or NExSS, a NASA-sponsored group which aims to stimulate academic science into exoplanets and exoplanetary solar systems. The HR 8799 system is over 129 light years away.
More information here. P/C: UC Berkeley.
