Watch four Alien Worlds orbit a distant Star
- Feb 2, 2017
- 1 min read
In 2008, scientists discovered three planetary companions circling within a dusty disk that surrounds the star, just as the nine planets of our solar system are encircled by the Kuiper belt. And they took a picture. It tied for the first direct image ever taken of planets outside our celestial neighborhood.
Further observation uncovered another planet. And now, we can watch all four in motion.
The Washington Post - Article by Sarah Kaplan Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/01/27/watch-four-alien-worlds-orbit-a-distant-star/?utm_term=.264d92b3251c
Star HR 8799 is so close and so brilliant (five times brighter than our own sun) that on a clear night it can easily be spotted by the naked eye.
HR 8799 is a young (~30 million-year-old) main-sequence star located 129 light years (39 parsecs) away from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus, with roughly 1.5 times the Sun's mass and 4.9 times its luminosity.
It is part of a system that also contains a debris disk and at least four massive planets. Those planets, along with Fomalhaut b, were the first extrasolar planets whose orbital motion was confirmed via direct imaging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_8799#cite_note-Marois2011-7
Clip credit: Jason Wang By Jason Wang, et al - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVgKidAuf4o (converted by uploader from WebM to GIF), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55463078 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Clips credit: ESO, ESA/HUBBLE & NASA
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