September 10, 2008 - ScienceNews
The 1840s outburst of the star Eta Carinae eludes classification.
New observations suggest that the brilliant outburst of a hefty star that first wowed observers in the 1840s could be signs of a new, exotic type of stellar explosion.
For centuries, the star Eta Carinae had appeared to be a run-of-the-mill Milky Way resident. But in late 1837, this sleeping giant awoke. By 1843 it had become the second-brightest object in the night sky. Over the next 13 years, the massive star cast off two billowing, mushroom-shaped clouds of material. The star then faded but, a decade ago, unexpectedly increased in brightness and is now visible to the naked eye.
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Monday, September 22, 2008
Mysterious Explosion Caused Massive Star to Brighten
September 10, 2008 - National Geographic News
Stars have onion-like layers that blow off in fiery explosions before a final killing blow—a supernova—turns them into black holes, according to a new theory of star death.
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Using two telescopes at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory in Chile, Smith took another look at both the Homunculus Nebula and another shell of cast-off material, estimated to be a thousand years old.
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Stars have onion-like layers that blow off in fiery explosions before a final killing blow—a supernova—turns them into black holes, according to a new theory of star death.
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Using two telescopes at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory in Chile, Smith took another look at both the Homunculus Nebula and another shell of cast-off material, estimated to be a thousand years old.
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Mysterious Stellar Blast in the 1840s Was a “Supernova Imposter”
September 11, 2008 - Discover.com
A remarkable stellar event that mesmerized astronomers in 1843 may have been a previously unknown kind of explosion, researchers say. That explosion, which made the star Eta Carinae one of the brightest in the Southern sky, could have been the precursor to the star’s expected explosion into a supernova.
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A remarkable stellar event that mesmerized astronomers in 1843 may have been a previously unknown kind of explosion, researchers say. That explosion, which made the star Eta Carinae one of the brightest in the Southern sky, could have been the precursor to the star’s expected explosion into a supernova.
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Eta Carinae: A Supermassive Showoff
September 12, 2008 - SkyandTelescope.com
Oh, how I wish the Hubble Space Telescope had been around in the 1840s. That's when a star in the southern constellation of Carina brightened dramatically and for a time became the second-brightest star in the nighttime sky.
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He tracked the nebula's outflow two ways. A spectrometer attached to the Gemini South 8-meter telescope high in the Chilean Andes recorded the movement of helium atoms, which have a strong infrared emission at 1.08 microns. Then, hopping over to the Blanco 4-meter telescope at nearby Cerro Tololo, he clocked velocities using Doppler shifts at deep-red wavelengths emitted by nitrogen-rich gas.
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Oh, how I wish the Hubble Space Telescope had been around in the 1840s. That's when a star in the southern constellation of Carina brightened dramatically and for a time became the second-brightest star in the nighttime sky.
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He tracked the nebula's outflow two ways. A spectrometer attached to the Gemini South 8-meter telescope high in the Chilean Andes recorded the movement of helium atoms, which have a strong infrared emission at 1.08 microns. Then, hopping over to the Blanco 4-meter telescope at nearby Cerro Tololo, he clocked velocities using Doppler shifts at deep-red wavelengths emitted by nitrogen-rich gas.
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Eta Carinae’s eruptions a multi-stage process
September 11, 2008 - AstronomyNow.com
Scientists have shown that the outbursts of Eta Carinae, the Milky Way’s biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the Sun, could be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova.
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Using the international Gemini South 8-metre telescope and the Blanco 4-metre telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Smith and colleagues studied the enigmatic star and noticed something new: extremely fast filaments of gas speeding away from the star at five times the speed of the debris in the Homunculus nebula.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
A Maybe Planet, Orbiting Its Maybe Sun
September 18, 2008 - New York Times
Astronomers from the University of Toronto have published a picture of what they say might be the first image of a planet orbiting another Sunlike star.
The planet, according to their observations, is 7 to 12 times as massive as Jupiter and is about 30 billion miles from a star known as 1RXS J160929.1-210524, about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
The picture was taken last spring by the 270-inch diameter Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, using so-called adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric blurring and thus sharpen the images of both star and planet.
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Astronomers from the University of Toronto have published a picture of what they say might be the first image of a planet orbiting another Sunlike star.
The planet, according to their observations, is 7 to 12 times as massive as Jupiter and is about 30 billion miles from a star known as 1RXS J160929.1-210524, about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
The picture was taken last spring by the 270-inch diameter Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, using so-called adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric blurring and thus sharpen the images of both star and planet.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
First Picture of likely Planet around Sun-Like Star
September 16, 2008 - Astrobiology
Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the sun.
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight (8) times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the sun at only about 30 times the Earth-sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the sun, but is much younger.
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Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the sun.
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight (8) times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the sun at only about 30 times the Earth-sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the sun, but is much younger.
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Scope finds planet orbiting sunlike star
September 16, 2008 - Honolulu Star Bulletin
For the first time ever, astronomers using the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea have taken a picture of what likely is a planet circling a star similar to our sun.
Discovered by astronomers from the University of Toronto, the planet is nothing like Earth and only moderately like our solar system's Jupiter.
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For the first time ever, astronomers using the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea have taken a picture of what likely is a planet circling a star similar to our sun.
Discovered by astronomers from the University of Toronto, the planet is nothing like Earth and only moderately like our solar system's Jupiter.
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A star set in ice
August 22, 2008 - Nature News
Astronomers have spotted a disk of dust and ice ringing a young Sun-like star 165 light years away. The icy signature of the disk and the collisions between bodies inferred to be taking place there suggest it is similar to the Sun's Kuiper belt, a disk of small icy bodies that extends beyond Neptune.
"The key new word is icy," says Christine Chen, an astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland and lead author of the new study. "This is the first time there's evidence for water ice around a main sequence star."
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For their study of HD 181327, in the constellation of Pictor, Chen and her colleagues used several instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini South telescope, an 8-metre ground-based telescope in Chile that is sensitive in the near infrared.
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Astronomers have spotted a disk of dust and ice ringing a young Sun-like star 165 light years away. The icy signature of the disk and the collisions between bodies inferred to be taking place there suggest it is similar to the Sun's Kuiper belt, a disk of small icy bodies that extends beyond Neptune.
"The key new word is icy," says Christine Chen, an astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland and lead author of the new study. "This is the first time there's evidence for water ice around a main sequence star."
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For their study of HD 181327, in the constellation of Pictor, Chen and her colleagues used several instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini South telescope, an 8-metre ground-based telescope in Chile that is sensitive in the near infrared.
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Monday, September 15, 2008
First Picture of Likely Planet around a Sun-like Star
September 15, 2008 - SpaceRef
Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun.
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight (8) times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.
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Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun.
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight (8) times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.
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Astronomers image planet around Sun-like star
September 15, 2008 - New Scientist
Astronomers have snapped a picture of what may turn out to be the first known planet orbiting a star similar to the Sun. If confirmed, it could challenge estimates of how far away planets can form from their host stars.
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In a survey of more than 85 stars using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, the team found one potential planet that is 8 times as massive, 10 times as hot and roughly 30,000 times as bright as Jupiter near a star called 1RXS J160929.1-210524. The star is 85% as massive as the Sun but less than 0.1% its age, at an estimated 5 million years old.
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Astronomers have snapped a picture of what may turn out to be the first known planet orbiting a star similar to the Sun. If confirmed, it could challenge estimates of how far away planets can form from their host stars.
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In a survey of more than 85 stars using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, the team found one potential planet that is 8 times as massive, 10 times as hot and roughly 30,000 times as bright as Jupiter near a star called 1RXS J160929.1-210524. The star is 85% as massive as the Sun but less than 0.1% its age, at an estimated 5 million years old.
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Historic snapshot of a planet beyond the solar system
September 15, 2008 - ScienceNews
The image is possibly the first of an extrasolar planet orbiting a normal star, but some of its features counter current thinking.
After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.
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He and his colleagues found the new planet earlier this year by using a special optics system on the Gemini North telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. The team scoured the vicinity of some 85 stars belonging to the Upper Scorpius association. Stars in this grouping lie 500 light-years from Earth and are only about 5 million years old. The sun, by comparison, is 4.56 billion years old.
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The image is possibly the first of an extrasolar planet orbiting a normal star, but some of its features counter current thinking.
After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.
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He and his colleagues found the new planet earlier this year by using a special optics system on the Gemini North telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. The team scoured the vicinity of some 85 stars belonging to the Upper Scorpius association. Stars in this grouping lie 500 light-years from Earth and are only about 5 million years old. The sun, by comparison, is 4.56 billion years old.
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Is This a Planet?
September 15, 2008 - Sky and Telescope
Discovering a planet around another star is no big deal these days — dozens of them have been reported in 2008 alone, and the total count now stands at more than 300.
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Now a trio of astronomers from the University of Toronto has found a "planetary-mass candidate" next to a young star that has roughly the Sun's mass. To see it, last April they utilized an adaptive-optics-aided infrared imager attached to the Gemini North telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
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Discovering a planet around another star is no big deal these days — dozens of them have been reported in 2008 alone, and the total count now stands at more than 300.
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Now a trio of astronomers from the University of Toronto has found a "planetary-mass candidate" next to a young star that has roughly the Sun's mass. To see it, last April they utilized an adaptive-optics-aided infrared imager attached to the Gemini North telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
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Gemini North telescope captures first picture of likely planet
September 15, 2008 - Astronomy.com
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about 8 times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance from its star. For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance. The parent star is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.
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Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about 8 times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance from its star. For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance. The parent star is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.
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Exoplanet circles 'normal star'
September 15, 2008 - BBC News
A planet has been pictured outside our Solar System which appears to be circling a star like our own Sun - a first in astronomy.
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hree astronomers from the University of Toronto used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 and the planetary candidate.
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A planet has been pictured outside our Solar System which appears to be circling a star like our own Sun - a first in astronomy.
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hree astronomers from the University of Toronto used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 and the planetary candidate.
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Scientists get images of planet with sun-like star
September 15, 2008 - Reuters
Scientists have snapped the first images of a planet outside our solar system that is orbiting a star very much like the sun.
Nearly all of the roughly 300 so-called extrasolar planets discovered to date have been detected using indirect methods such as changes observed in a star when a planet orbits directly in front of it from the perspective of Earth.
But in findings announced on Monday, University of Toronto scientists said they used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take direct pictures of the planet, which is about the size of Jupiter but with eight times the mass.
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Scientists have snapped the first images of a planet outside our solar system that is orbiting a star very much like the sun.
Nearly all of the roughly 300 so-called extrasolar planets discovered to date have been detected using indirect methods such as changes observed in a star when a planet orbits directly in front of it from the perspective of Earth.
But in findings announced on Monday, University of Toronto scientists said they used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take direct pictures of the planet, which is about the size of Jupiter but with eight times the mass.
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First Picture of Alien Planet Orbiting Sunlike Star?
September 15, 2008 - National Geographic
An image released today of a distant star and its potential planetary companion could go down in history as the first picture of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a sunlike star.
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Now scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
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An image released today of a distant star and its potential planetary companion could go down in history as the first picture of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a sunlike star.
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Now scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
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U of T researchers capture image of planet orbiting distant star
September 15, 2008 - CBC
Planet-hunting astronomers at the University of Toronto say they have taken a picture of a rare sight — a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system.
Astronomers David Lafrenicre, Ray Jayawardhana and Marten van Kerkwijk made their finding after doing a survey of 80 stars taken using the Gemini North telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Their findings, which have been submitted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters, have been posted online on Cornell University's arXiv website.
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
1843 Stellar Eruption May Be New Type Of Star Explosion
September 10, 2008 - ScienceDaily
Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret: Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star.
Reporting in the Sept. 11 issue of Nature, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Nathan Smith proposes that Eta Carinae's historic 1843 outburst was, in fact, an explosion that produced a fast blast wave similar to, but less energetic than, a real supernova. This well-documented event in our own Milky Way Galaxy is probably related to a class of faint stellar explosions in other galaxies recognized in recent years by telescopes searching for extragalactic supernovae.
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Smith's recent observations using the international Gemini South 8-meter telescope and the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile reveal something new: Extremely fast filaments of gas moving five times faster than the debris in the Homunculus nebula were propelled away from Eta Carinae in the same event. The amount of mass in the relatively slow-moving Homunculus was already at the edge of plausibility in terms of what an extreme stellar wind could do physically, Smith said. The much faster and more energetic material he discovered poses even harsher difficulties for current theories.
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Brightest Stellar Explosion Heralds New Type Of Long-distance Astronomy
September 10, 2008 - ScienceDaily
A flash of light that blinded even small telescopes six months ago was the brightest astronomical explosion ever observed - visible to the naked eye despite originating halfway across the universe.
The gamma-ray burst, catalogued as GRB 080319B, was the result of a massive star's explosion 7.5 billion years ago that sent a pencil-beam of intense light on a direct collision course for Earth. It is the only known gamma-ray burst to have had a visible component bright enough to see with the naked eye.
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The Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) at Lick Observatory also followed the fading afterglow of the burst, as did the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Bloom and his colleagues combined these observations with Swift data and Pi of the Sky images to complete their analysis.
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A flash of light that blinded even small telescopes six months ago was the brightest astronomical explosion ever observed - visible to the naked eye despite originating halfway across the universe.
The gamma-ray burst, catalogued as GRB 080319B, was the result of a massive star's explosion 7.5 billion years ago that sent a pencil-beam of intense light on a direct collision course for Earth. It is the only known gamma-ray burst to have had a visible component bright enough to see with the naked eye.
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The Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) at Lick Observatory also followed the fading afterglow of the burst, as did the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Bloom and his colleagues combined these observations with Swift data and Pi of the Sky images to complete their analysis.
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Astronomers Discover Missing Link For Origin Of Comets
September 9, 2008 - ScienceDaily
An international team of scientists that includes University of British Columbia astronomer Brett Gladman has found an unusual object whose backward and tilted orbit around the Sun may clarify the origins of certain comets.
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The international team has been carrying out a targeted search for objects with highly tilted orbits. Their discovery was made using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, with follow-up observations provided by the MMT telescope in Arizona, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) four-metre telescope in Chile, and the Gemini South telescope, also in Chile, in which Canada is a partner.
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An international team of scientists that includes University of British Columbia astronomer Brett Gladman has found an unusual object whose backward and tilted orbit around the Sun may clarify the origins of certain comets.
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The international team has been carrying out a targeted search for objects with highly tilted orbits. Their discovery was made using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, with follow-up observations provided by the MMT telescope in Arizona, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) four-metre telescope in Chile, and the Gemini South telescope, also in Chile, in which Canada is a partner.
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