Exo what? So if wikipedia is to be believed, an extrasolar planet (or exoplanet) is a planet beyond the Solar System, orbiting around another star. Imagine the earth, the moon and the sun- but in a completely different location 25 or more millions of light years away.
Is it really like our earth and moon and sun? In basic packaging yes- but are is this set terra in nature and able to support us nosy humans? Unknown.
Basically- the article I found, after wading through much nerd speak, the Hubble has officially taken the first known photos of a planetary system that is similar to ours. As of November 2008, 326 exoplanets have been detected and confirmed. But the photo you see attached- is the first known photo of such a thing.
Hopefully you'll notice the teeny little golden dot in amongst all the other dots. That represents a normal planet orbiting a normal star, 250 trillion kilometers from Earth. If I understand the geek speak correctly- the black patch in the middle of the whole pic is Fomalhaut (brightest star in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the 18th brightest in the sky, and only 25 light years away). It is a normal star (like our sun). And the tiny glowy dot in the zoomed in boxes are a planet (like Earth) orbiting it- and apparently there it has a little planet orbiting IT. So!
There you go! The big news in astronomy yesterday- at least according to this guy's blog over at discovermagazine.com- Phil Plait, astronomer dude who formerly worked on the Hubble.
Phil Plait
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/…-pictures/
Is it really like our earth and moon and sun? In basic packaging yes- but are is this set terra in nature and able to support us nosy humans? Unknown.
Basically- the article I found, after wading through much nerd speak, the Hubble has officially taken the first known photos of a planetary system that is similar to ours. As of November 2008, 326 exoplanets have been detected and confirmed. But the photo you see attached- is the first known photo of such a thing.
Hopefully you'll notice the teeny little golden dot in amongst all the other dots. That represents a normal planet orbiting a normal star, 250 trillion kilometers from Earth. If I understand the geek speak correctly- the black patch in the middle of the whole pic is Fomalhaut (brightest star in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the 18th brightest in the sky, and only 25 light years away). It is a normal star (like our sun). And the tiny glowy dot in the zoomed in boxes are a planet (like Earth) orbiting it- and apparently there it has a little planet orbiting IT. So!
There you go! The big news in astronomy yesterday- at least according to this guy's blog over at discovermagazine.com- Phil Plait, astronomer dude who formerly worked on the Hubble.
Phil Plait
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/…-pictures/
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