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Light Spotted From Beyond Solar System
Associated
Press/JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA | March 23 2005
A NASA telescope peering far beyond our solar system has
for the first time directly measured light from two Jupiter-sized gas planets
closely orbiting distant stars, adding crucial features to astronomy's portrait
of faraway worlds.
Studies of the infrared light streaming from the two giant
planets suggest they are made of hot, swirling gases that reach a broiling
1,340 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.
"It's an awesome experience to realize we are seeing
the glow of distant worlds," said astronomer David Charbonneau of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., whose team
captured light from a planet in the constellation Lyra. "The one thing
they can't hide is their heat."
Since the mid-1990s, scientists have discovered more than
130 of these so-called extrasolar planets. But the stars they orbit are
so distant and shine so brightly that they tend to overwhelm the planets
from view.
To find them, astronomers indirectly measure the tiny gravitational
wobble that orbiting planets exert on their suns, or the brief dimming of
starlight that occurs when a planet's orbit carries it in front of the star.
But hot celestial objects like these gas planets also emit
infrared light. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detectors to collect
these infrared signals. Infrared light contains specific signatures in different
wave lengths that reveal more scientific characteristics about a space object
than visible light.
One planet is known as HD 209458b, nicknamed Osiris. It
orbits a sun-like star 150 light-years from Earth in the constellation of
Pegasus. Its infrared signature was measured by astronomers at the NASA
Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Details will appear Wednesday
in the online version of the journal Nature.
The other extrasolar planet measured by the Harvard-Smithsonian
team is known as TRes-1. It is located 500 light-years from Earth in the
constellation Lyra. Results will be published in the June 20 issue of Astrophysical
Journal.
Both planets circle their stars in less than four days
at a distance of less than 4 million miles, explaining their very high temperatures.
In contrast, Earth orbits an average of 93 million
miles from the sun.
