Scotland leads way as Einstein effect detects planet
Posted on: Saturday, 17 April 2004, 06:00 CDT
AN international team of astronomers, with its leader in Scotland, say that for the first time they've discovered a distant planet by detecting the way the gravitational tug from its system bends light, an effect predicted by Albert Einstein.
The newfound planet, estimated to be 1.5 times the size of Jupiter, is about 17,000 light-years away, and is 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 next month's edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is Ian Bond of the Institute for Astronomy in Edinburgh.
The gravitational tug of the pair bending and focusing the light of a star 7000 light-years farther away was predicted by Einstein.
The astronomers 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 like our own.
Other techniques used to discover extrasolar planets work only with massive worlds.
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