Environment

New Planets Discovered Beyond our Solar System

by TFleming | November 13, 2008 at 01:30 pm

1012 views | 20 Recommendations | 1 comment

We are one step closer to discovering if there is life out there beyond our solar system. Although their findings prove to be uninhabitable Nasa scientists are excited that their recent technology was successful.

Using the latest techniques in space technology, astronomers at NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture pictures of four newly discovered planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.

"After all these years, it's amazing to have a picture showing not one but three planets," said physicist Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

"The discovery of the HR 8799 system is a crucial step on the road to the ultimate detection of another Earth," he said.

Both sets of research findings were published Thursday in Science Express, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A team of American and British astronomers and physicists, using the Gemini North and Keck telescopes on the Mauna Kea mountaintop in Hawaii, observed host star HR8799 to find three of the new planets.

Scientists estimate that HR8799, roughly 1.5 times the size of the sun, is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. The individual planets in this planetary family are estimated to be seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.