MessageToEagle.com - Direct imaging of exoplanets has been a field in rapid development over the past few years, with detections
of several planets and low-mass brown-dwarfs.
Among these discoveries, one claimed planet detection that stands out as peculiar in many ways is that of Fomalhaut b.
Is Fomalhaut b a planet? New observations suggest this question will probably be debated for a while from now on.
Some years ago Hubble took an image of a planet circling another star. The planet is called Fomalhaut b and it orbits the
bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).
Astronomers have long suspected there might be a planet in the region.
In 2004, it became clear that a large dust belt is surrounding Fomalhaut.
Soon it became obvious that this structure is in fact a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 34.5 billion kilometres across with a sharp inner edge.
This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt.
Some years later, in 2008, Hubble managed to take the first visible image of Fomalhaut b, a point source of light lying 3 billion
kilometres inside the ring's inner edge.
"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this
program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off", said astronomer Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley
"Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet
at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape.
The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust'", says team member Mark Clampin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
This visible-light image from the Hubble shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star.
Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, and E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.),
and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.)
New research and observations made by astronomers from the
University of Princeton and University of Montreal suggest Fomalhaut b is not a planet but a dust cloud!
The team led by Princeton's Markus Janson has used NASA's Spitzer Telescope to obtain ten times better resolution of the star.
"No signature is found at the position where Fomalhaut b would be expected.
There is almost certainly no direct flux from a planet contributing to the visible-light signature.
Final reduced image for the real data (left) and for the data with an artificial companion introduced at the
expected position of Fomalhaut b (right). Arrow 1 points out the expected position of the companion based on earlier
detections in the visible-light images. There is no corresponding point source seen in the real data. The artificial
companion in the right-hand image passes through the data reduction without any flux loss, verifying that the nondetection
is real, such that a stringent upper flux limit can be set. Arrow 2 points toward the brightest possible point
source in the field. Its position is consistent with a ring-nested orbit, but the significance is too low to make any
assessment of whether or not it is a real object. North is up and East is to the left in the images.
This, in combination with the existing body of data for the Fomalhaut system, strongly implies that the dynamically
inferred giant planet companion and the visible-light point source are physically unrelated," says the new study.
According to the Princeton team, the "real" Fomalhaut b still hides in the system waiting to be discovered.
The Hubble team is interested in the news data but questions its interpretation. Hubble astronomers have ruled out the possibility
Fomalhaut b could be a dust cloud.
According to Professor Kalas, Spitzer is capable of taking very sharp images but, it lacks the light sensitivity to detect a Saturn-sized
planet and Fomalhaut b is assumed to be only 10 times heavier than Earth, smaller than Neptune in other words.
This illustration shows the discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its sun, Fomalhaut.
This structure is a Saturn-like ring that astronomers say may encircle the planet. Fomalhaut also is surrounded by a ring of material.
The edge of this vast disk is shown in the background as the curving cloud-like feature that appears to intersect the 200-million year-old star.
Fomalhaut b lies three billion kilometres inside the disk's inner edge. The planet completes an orbit around Fomalhaut every 872 years.
Credit: ESA, NASA and L. Calçada (ESO)
Additionally, scientists say that "giant planet companion and the visible-light point source are physically unrelated.
This in turn implies that the real Fomalhaut b still hides in the system."
"Although we do find a tentative point source in our images that could in principle correspond to this object, its significance
is too low to distinguish whether it is real or not at this point.
Concerning the visible-light point source, its underlying physics is unclear, but the only hypothesis that can be shown to reasonably
fit all existing data is an optically thin dust cloud, which is transient or has a transient component.
If this interpretation is valid, the cloud may or may not be physically bound to a central object in the super-Earth mass regime.
While astronomers keep debating this issue, we hope that NASA's infrared
James Webb Space Telescope scheduled for launch in 2018 will later be able to shed some light on this controversy.
Abnormal Star Discovered In The 'Forbidden Zone'
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists.
The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
Gigantic Icebergs Floating In Space
The origin of Earth's water is hotly debated. New discoveries suggest that our planet's seas could once have been giant icebergs floating through space.
The reason why it remains unclear how our oceans were created is because our planet formed at such high temperatures that any original water must have evaporated.
Bright Star In The Constellation Lyra Is Cooler Than The Human Body
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body.
Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success.
When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.
Thermonuclear Burning In A Neutron Star Detected For The First Time!
It's a very important discovery!
For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a
neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
Alcubierre Warp Drive - A Doomsday Weapon?
Is the Alcubierre warp drive a doomsday weapon or our passport to the Universe?
The Alcubierre warp drive is a theoretical tool that would allow for spacecraft to travel long distances in space rapidly,
by deforming the space-time continuum in a bubble around the spaceship...
Astronomical Mystery - Tremendous Explosion And Appearance Of Odd Rings
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The collision occurred at speeds near 60 million kilometers per hour and shock-heats the ring material causing it to glow.
Over time, astronomers have watched and waited for the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion to crash into previously expelled material...
Doesn't Secret Dark Matter Exist?
The more scientists study dark matter they know lesser and are not particularly optimistic about their results.
After completing this study, we know less about dark matter than we did before," said Matt Walker, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
A mysterious and still unknown substance is totally invisible in the Universe and reveals its presence only through its gravitational pull...
Dwarf Irregular Galaxy That Forces Scientists To Re-Evaluate Old Theory
Astronomers from Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, Portugal and Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden come up
with new findings regarding one of the most studied objects - the dwarf galaxy I Zw 18.
The results led the scientists to the conclusion that this enigmatic blue compact dwarf might force
astronomers to review current galaxy formation models and much of what is known about galaxy formation and evolution might need substantial revision.
Giant Jupiter - Our "Would-Be" Friend With Secrets From The Past
It knocked a giant planet into deep space, swallowed up a smaller rival before it could grow any bigger.
Careful observers saw dark spots rapidly changing places and almost a century ago, a luminous protuberance on the eastern edge of Jupiter,
on the equatorial side of the north equatorial belt was reported.
Stars In The Milky Way Move In Mysterious Ways
Appearently we still have a lot to learn about the stars in the Milky Way.
Something strange has been noticed about the stars in our galaxy.
Rather than moving in circles around the center of the Milky Way, all the stars in our Galaxy are travelling along different paths,
moving away from the Galactic center.
The "Cloaked" Star Was Difficult To Find
An object obscured by dust, and buried in a two-star system enshrouded by dense gas, is not easy to find.
A "cloaked" star was discovered after it ate a little of its neighbor. The meal must have given the star a bit of indigestion, because it
"burped" with a blast of high-energy radiation, which gave it away.
Never Ending Winter In Our Solar System
There's no lack of ice in our solar system.
Frozen water can be found almost everywhere: the poles of Mercury, Earth, the moon and Mars; the rings and icy satellites of the outer planets;
and in comets that come whizzing past.
Winter in our Solar system is not as we know it on our planet.
Violent Dragon Clash Billions Of Years Ago
NGC 5907 is sometimes called the "Splinter" or Knife Edge Galaxy because of its unusual appearance.
It is a spiral galaxy lying in the Dragon constellation,
about 40 million light-years from Earth that could have been formed through a gigantic collision of galaxies, 8 to 9 billion years ago.
MessageToEagle.com - Direct imaging of exoplanets has been a field in rapid development over the past few years, with detections
of several planets and low-mass brown-dwarfs.
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists.
The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
The origin of Earth's water is hotly debated. New discoveries suggest that our planet's seas could once have been giant icebergs floating through space.
The reason why it remains unclear how our oceans were created is because our planet formed at such high temperatures that any original water must have evaporated.
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body.
Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success.
When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.
It's a very important discovery!
For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a
neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
Is the Alcubierre warp drive a doomsday weapon or our passport to the Universe?
The Alcubierre warp drive is a theoretical tool that would allow for spacecraft to travel long distances in space rapidly,
by deforming the space-time continuum in a bubble around the spaceship...
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The more scientists study dark matter they know lesser and are not particularly optimistic about their results.
Astronomers from Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, Portugal and Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden come up
with new findings regarding one of the most studied objects - the dwarf galaxy I Zw 18.
It knocked a giant planet into deep space, swallowed up a smaller rival before it could grow any bigger.
Appearently we still have a lot to learn about the stars in the Milky Way.
Something strange has been noticed about the stars in our galaxy.
Rather than moving in circles around the center of the Milky Way, all the stars in our Galaxy are travelling along different paths,
moving away from the Galactic center.
An object obscured by dust, and buried in a two-star system enshrouded by dense gas, is not easy to find.
There's no lack of ice in our solar system.
NGC 5907 is sometimes called the "Splinter" or Knife Edge Galaxy because of its unusual appearance.
It is a spiral galaxy lying in the Dragon constellation,
about 40 million light-years from Earth that could have been formed through a gigantic collision of galaxies, 8 to 9 billion years ago.