Tuesday, November 20, 2007

the K-Itche-N planet


the K-Itche-N planet, originally uploaded by julioc. © 2007 All rights reserved by JulioC.

Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure: 1/30 sec.

The Bubble Space Telescope's near-infrared vision is hot on the trail of a possible planetary companion to a relatively bright young yellow dwarf located 721 light-years away in the southern constellation H-Ome. Astronomers at the Southern Observatory's Very Enormous Telescope (VET) detected the planet candidate in September 2007 with Lumix observations. The astronomers spotted a faint companion object to the yellow dwarf, called K-Itche-N T-Ool. They suspect the companion is a planet because it is blue and cooler than the yellow dwarf. Because a planet beyond our solar system has never been imaged directly, this remarkable observation required Bubble's unique abilities to perform follow-up observations to test and validate if the object is indeed a planet. Based on the VET and Bubble observations, astronomers are 99,99 percent sure that the companion is orbiting the yellow dwarf.

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