Astronomers Find Planet With New Method
Posted on: Friday, 16 April 2004, 06:00 CDT
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Astronomers say that for the first time, they've discovered a distant planet by detecting the gravitational tug of it and its star.
They said the technique should expand the search for new planets and allow the discovery of ever-smaller worlds, including those the size of Earth, in solar systems more like our own.
The newfound planet, estimated to be 11/2 times the size of Jupiter, is about 17,000 light-years away, orbiting a star in the constellation Sagittarius.
The find is the first made through measurements of the effect the combined mass of a planet and its star has on the light of a more distant star.
Details appear in the May 10 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is astronomer Ian Bond of the Institute for Astronomy in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The gravitational tug of the pair bending and focusing the light of a star 7,000 light-years farther away is an effect predicted by Albert Einstein.
Observations made by astronomers of extra spikes in the distant star's brightness indicate that two separate objects affect its light. The international group concluded the second object must be an orbiting planet just 0.4 percent the mass of its star.
Other techniques used to discover extrasolar planets work only with massive worlds, which typically have been found to follow orbits very close to their stars. That's an arrangement unlike that of our solar system and is thought not to be conducive to life.
The new planet orbits its star at a distance roughly three times that between the Earth and the sun, raising the possibility it's accompanied by smaller planets that follow closer-in orbits.
About 125 planets found beyond the reaches of our own solar system.
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On the Net:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/103a.cfm
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