Bizarre planet has star in tow

[dr. what]

linky

Canadian space telescope find: 'Unlike anything astronomers have seen before'

Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service


Tuesday, May 17, 2005


Canadian astronomers probing far off worlds say they have observed a bizarre planet that has its parent star in tow.

"It's literally like a tiny chihuahua dragging its master around by the leash," says Jaymie Matthews, of the University of British Columbia, who announced the find yesterday at the Canadian Astronomical Society annual meeting in Montreal.

Mr. Matthews, who is in charge of the Canadian space telescope known as MOST (Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars), says he and his colleagues have been "blown away" by the find and have been working overtime in recent weeks to observe the extraordinary planetary system called tau Bootis.

The interactions between the star and the planet zipping around it every 3.3 days "are unlike anything astronomers have seen before," he says.

The planet's gravity seems to be forcing the star -- or at least its outer envelope -- to rotate so it always keeps the same face to the planet, even though the planet is believed to be less than 1% of the star's mass.

It may be similar to the way the moon moves water on Earth's surface, resulting in the ocean's tides, say astronomers. But in the case of tau Bootis, huge clouds of swirling hot gases appear to have succumbed to the planet's influence. There are also indications the planet is affecting star spots, distorting tides and triggering magnetic activity on the star's surface.

"Who knows, there may be gas travelling back and forth between the star and planet," says Mr. Matthews, who is thrilled by the quality of data streaming down from the MOST telescope.

The telescope, dubbed the "humble space telescope" because of it small size and budget, cost $10-million, a fraction of the cost of other telescopes.

"We're running with the big dogs," says Mr. Matthews, who notes his team has been sharing the podium at recent meetings with scientists probing far-off planets using NASA's $720-million USSpritzer Space Observatory and $1.5-billion Hubble space telescope.

More than 140 "exoplanets" -- planets orbiting stars other than the sun -- have been discovered in the last decade. Astronomers are trying to get a clearer understanding of the mysterious worlds that have inverted theories on the origin and evolution of planetary systems.

The planet exerting so much control over tau Bootis is enormous; it's at least four times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The planet is also scorching hot, as it is 20 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun.

The MOST team, which launched the suitcase-sized telescope on a refurbished Russian ICBM in 2003, is also probing exoplanet HD209458b, another hot gaseous planet that hugs close to its parent star.

Mr. Matthews and his colleagues intend to put this planet and its star under a 45-day "stake-out" using MOST in August. They will monitor subtle shifts in stellar brightness as the planet slips behind its parent star, or "winks out" as Mr. Matthews puts it. The scientists say they should be able to infer from changes in the amount of light picked up the telescope what the planet's atmosphere and weather is like; it's no small feat considering the planet is 150 light years away (one light year is the distance that light travels through a vacuum in one year -- about 9.46 trillion kilometres) and the telescope mirror is the size of a pie plate.

He likens it to trying to see a mosquito buzzing around a 400-watt street lamp from 1,000 kilometres away.

The scientists stress giant hot planets cannot support life as we know it. But the research is paving the way toward the "great prize" -- the discovery of earth-sized planets, says Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who collaborates with the MOST team.

Data from the telescope is collected by rooftop receivers at the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto and the University of Vienna.

© National Post 2005

[SyntaxVorlon]

heh Bootis.

Cool find.

[wautd]

seconded

[Petrosjko]

Kick. Ass.

[Chmee]

At 'four times the mass of Jupiter' it sounds more like a proto-star than a planet, but then they say it's less than 1% of the star's mass ....

So, just how big is tau Bootis?*









*where I assume they listen to a lot of Parliament/Funkadelic

[VT-16]

Space keeps getting weirder and funnier by the year. Cool find.

[Firefox]

So, just how big is tau Bootis?*

Approximately 1.3 solar masses, according to this site.

[General Zod]

obviously the GL corps is being busy.

[His Divine Shadow]

The little planet that could.

[felineki]

Space keeps getting weirder and funnier by the year. Cool find.

I agree. The kind of things astonomers are coming across these days are amazing... It really goes to show how our solar system is just a tiny fraction of the sort of stuff that's out there.

I had read about some other planets with very short orbits, but 3 days is the shortest I've heard of yet. Heh, imagine holidays/birthdays/etc. occurring every three days.

[VT-16]

I can recall reading about:

- A seemingly natural particle-accelerator 20 LIGHTYEARS in diameter near the center of the galaxy.

- A planet with it´s atmosphere trailing it like gases from a comet.

- Hot Jupiters (Jupiter-size or bigger very near their stars).

- A possible rogue planet travelling through space. (Could be a failed star.)

- A star being "kicked out" of the galaxy.

- The thing in this thread.

All that, and more in just the last decade.

[Gil Hamilton]

This stuff never ceases to amaze me. The more we peer out into space, the more it becomes clear that the galaxy is alot weirder and incredible than we could have ever predicted. Can you imagine what our descendants will find when we get out there? Makes me kind of sad that I'll never see interstellar travel within my lifetime or even in my grandkids lifetime.

[Lord Zentei]

At 'four times the mass of Jupiter' it sounds more like a proto-star than a planet, but then they say it's less than 1% of the star's mass ....

Actually, it is only considered a star if the mass is 13x Jupiter or more.

[Noble Ire]

I can recall reading about:

- A seemingly natural particle-accelerator 20 LIGHTYEARS in diameter near the center of the galaxy.

- A planet with it´s atmosphere trailing it like gases from a comet.

- Hot Jupiters (Jupiter-size or bigger very near their stars).

- A possible rogue planet travelling through space. (Could be a failed star.)

- A star being "kicked out" of the galaxy.

- The thing in this thread.

All that, and more in just the last decade.

Dont forget the four planets they found that are enveloped in so much radiation that they glow like neutron stars. (or was it they were covered in neutron radiation? Couple years back.)

[wolveraptor]

They did thing on Discovery Science on Tau Bootis a few days ago. The program was about gas giants circling so close to parent stars. They developed a scenario in which a gas giant would form far away from its parent and circle inexorably inwards.

To be added to the list of extraordinary space-finds: Diamond planets with oceans of oil.

[darthdavid]

This stuff never ceases to amaze me. The more we peer out into space, the more it becomes clear that the galaxy is alot weirder and incredible than we could have ever predicted. Can you imagine what our descendants will find when we get out there? Makes me kind of sad that I'll never see interstellar travel within my lifetime or even in my grandkids lifetime.

If you want to be really depressed think about the fact that It's likely no human will ever "get out there" because we'll probably be wiped out/wipe ourselve's out long before then.

[wautd]

Those things would make great Trek episodes

[Alliance SpecForceTrooper]

If you want to be really depressed think about the fact that It's likely no human will ever "get out there" because we'll probably be wiped out/wipe ourselve's out long before then.

Nah, more like a supernova will occur somewhere close enough to us for it to sterilize our planet. Or we'll get splattered by a comet that is overdue to plow into us any day now.

Have a nice day.

[wolveraptor]

Or, more likely, we won't get past the nuclear age.

[nightmare]

You know, it's not long ago that it was just speculation that other stars might have planets, the camps being devided between "common" to "none".