Musings of a Babylon Lurker » astronomy

First Earth-like exoplanet

lurker — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:05:15 +0000

Recently the first Earth like planet outside our own Solar System was found. The article can be found here.

The planet is about twice the diameter of our own Earth with a mass about 5 times that of Earth. We would probably feel rather heavy on that one.

When will we see the next one ? I am sure there are others within our range.

Colliding Planets !!

lurker — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:19:10 +0000

The Spitzer InfraRed Space Telescope, launched a few years ago, has , more or less by accident found the remains of – not one – *but two* rocky planets around a star about 100 light years away.

The two planets, one estimated to be in the order of Earth sized, the other Moon sized , appear to have collided probably a few thousand years ago, very recent in astronomical terms.

More detail can be found at Bad Astronomer Blog

This is, as far as I know, the first, however indirect, evidence of Earth/Moon sized planets.

That is not all : A few days ago it was reported that the Kepler Space Telescope, launched this year, had detected the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star

Exciting times indeed.

New record for Gamma Ray Bursts

lurker — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:51:12 +0000

On April 23th the most powerful gamma ray burst ever recorded was detected by the Swift telescope. More about can be found here at NASA’s site.

With that type of bursts we look back in time, this time more than 13000 million years, this belongs to the earliest generations of stars in the known Universe. Impressive.