I wrote yesterday about waiting a few years to watch the planets around HD 8799 move, and completely missed the fact that the Hubble Space Telescope has managed to do exactly this for one planet in Formaulhaut’s dust disk.
Here’s the disk :
And here are two images of the planet, superimposed, from 2004 and 2006.
I [...]
Posts made in November, 2008
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Seeing the first images of extrasolar planets around a star is a stunning moment. I found out about this earlier in the week, and have had to keep quiet (along with all the other journalists) until the embargo passed, but feast your eyes on this.
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The speckle pattern is what’s left of the star’s light [...] -
Over the last year or so, the denziens of the Galaxy Zoo forum have been getting together to talk astronomy over a beer or two. This seems like a splendid idea, so if you’re free on Sunday 23rd November and in – or can get to – central London, then please join me and the [...]
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As we found out yesterday, dust storms ended the life of Phoenix, and today a JPL release tells us that Spirit is now suffering, producing less energy from its solar panels than it has at any point in the past five years. The forecast is better for the next few days, but the fear is [...]
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I’m in the office late, but am distracted by listening in to a Phoenix press teleconference happening right now. I hope the news isn’t as bad as I think it might be. Watch this space…
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Update :
A few sols ago, they were doing the last of their significant science days; they’d been planning to turn [...] -
Tonight’s Sky at Night includes a report from the Phoenix Mission Control in Tucson. We recorded it a couple of weeks ago, and while everything in there is still true, events on the surface of the red planet have moved on.
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While not dead yet, having successfully communicated with an orbiting spacecraft on Thursday, in [...]