• SciTech Home

New Planets in the Sky

First visible extrasolar planets found

• 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF
• National Research Council Canada
• Gemini Observatory; Artwork by Lynette Cook
• Paul Kalas/UC Berkeley; STScI
• NASA

• This 3D representation of the three planets orbiting the star HR 8799 shows the system is located 90 degrees away from the Milky Way galactic center, lower than the sun. (All orbital diameters are greatly exaggerated.)
• The three exoplanets (red dots in the right panel) are shown orbiting HR 8799, whose residual light is shown as the multi-colored specks in the center of the right panel. An infrared image of one of the planets, which lies at 38 AU from the star, is shown in the right panel.
• The HR 8799 planetary system (shown as an artist's conception) resembles a scaled-up version of the outer portion of the solar system, according to the researchers, who estimate the planets orbit their star at distances similar to those of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
• This 2006 Hubble Space Telescope optical image shows the belt of dust and debris (bright oval) surrounding the star Fomalhaut and the planet (inset) that orbits the star every 872 years and sculpts the inner edge of the belt.
• The full Eye-of-Sauron-like 2006 image of the dust disk surrounding Fomalhaut.

More How Green in the News @ GREEN.FOXNEWS.COM