What is the importance of NASA finding a planet circling around the star Fomalhaut?

On November 13, 2008, NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has taken a snapshot of a planet circling the star Fomalhaut. Obviously, this is the first planet other than our own that we know of orbits a base star. Other than this, why was this such a significant discovery?What is the importance of NASA finding a planet circling around the star Fomalhaut?The answer is related to the fact that the HST took the images in 2004 and 2006, and only just recently announced. Why wait?



The researchers waited because they wanted more time to study the images. It'd be really nice to have gotten a third shot in 2008, but the ACS camera on the HST which was used for the first two shots is broken. It was expected to be repaired a couple months ago, but then the servicing mission was delayed.



So, what's to study? It's not just a planet, it's a planet in a debris ring around the young star. So you have to sort of subtract the brightness of the ring to find the brightness of the planet. And the planet is brighter than expected. Perhaps it has rings like Saturn reflecting lots of light from the star. But more than that, one would like to see evidence of other planets forming. So there's lots to do.



What about the timing of the news release? Another image of planets in the same issue of Science? It doesn't look like a coincidence. The researchers waited as long as they could. IMO, they should have announced it soon after they'd figured out that it was a real effect in 2006. Then in 2009, when they snap their third shot, they could confirm it. Perhaps they've gotten time on the Keck or the VLT and gotten more recent data...



But imaging an extrasolar planet is a big deal. Being the first to do it in visible light is more bragging rights than a big deal, however. And this isn't the first planet that has been imaged. So, they went for a sound byte rather than explain that they're doing really cool planet formation science.



One of the troubles with sound byte science is that it's more of the same memorization of stupid facts that turns kids off to science in school. The cool stuff about science is getting your hands dirty doing experiments. Making mistakes. Getting results. I had much more fun measuring the speed of light - with a 3% error - than i'd ever have just memorizing the speed of light. If you want to accelerate the advancement of science, then push yourself to make mistakes faster. It's true for education as well.What is the importance of NASA finding a planet circling around the star Fomalhaut?Nassau's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.



Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Pisces Austral is, or the "Southern Fish."



Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by Nassau's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.



Hubble image of Fomalhaut This visible-light image from the Hubble shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star. Credit: NASA, ESS, P. Kala's, J. Graham, E. Chang, and E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clam pin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Liver more National Laboratory, Liver more, Calif.), and K. Stipulated and J. Krista (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.)

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Constellation Pic is Austral is Ground-based image showing Fomalhaut's location. Credit: A. Fuji, NASA, ESS, and Z. Leva (Staci)

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artist concept of Fomalhaut b in orbit This animation simulates Fomalhaut b's path around its star. The red dot represents the planet, the white dot represents the star, and the brown ring represents the debris disk. Credit: NASA, ESS, and G. Bacon (Staci)

%26gt; View animation In 2004, the corona graph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of interplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.



This large debris disk is similar to the Kipper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.



Hubble astronomer Paul Kala's, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.



Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.



Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.



"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kala's says.



"Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an explained at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for explained hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clam pin of Nassau's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.



Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' corona graph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.



The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.



Kala's and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut's starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion.



Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astro metric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.



Nassau's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make corona graphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior toWhat is the importance of NASA finding a planet circling around the star Fomalhaut?On a technical and scientific level, it's significant because it's the first direct observation of such an object. Previously, planets around other stars were only known by their effects on their parent star (creating very slight wobbles or very slight dimming).



Philosphically, it's significant because it shows that our solar system is not entirely unique and that planetary formation could potentially be quite common. This implies that Earth and its inhabitants could be part of a community of beings, rather than a unique outpost of life with no counterparts anywhere in the universe.