Hubble - The Most Important Picture Ever Taken

I have been trying to come up with some new content for this extrasolar planet blog but with the recent stops of exo-planet discoveries it has made it a little difficult for me to do so. But I was on Digg the other day looking through some stories when I stumbled across this video that I think everyone should watch, for it is very informative and blows up in your face. This video below will surely answer your question of is there life on other planets.










source: deepastronomy.com

No new updates on extrasolarplanets

The month of July 2008 has not had too many updates on extrasolar planets, not many have been discovered. I promise to start updating this site whenever I find some new information. My apologies for not keeping up to date like I should. We will find an earth like planet soon.

smallest extrasolar planet detected

Astronomers set the record for finding the smallest extrasolar planet to date on may 30th, 2008, orbiting around the star MOA-2007-BLG-192L. It is estimated that MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb only has about 3 times the mass then earth does. The planet is guessed to be about 3000 light years away from us, which will make it extremely hard to ever view even with our future telescopes like the giant Magellan telescope. The planet was discovered using the gravitational microlensing technique.

The star MOA-2007-BLG-192L guessed to have only about 6% of our suns mass, so we think it’s either a red dwarf star that sustains nuclear fusion or a brown dwarf, also known as a failed star. This discovery around MOA-2007-BLG-192L just makes us realize that it is very common for low mass stars to have low mass extrasolar planets around them. The extra-solar planet MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb is guessed to be about half the distance that our Earth is to our sun. Which in theory would make this a very cold planet maybe even as cold as Pluto considering that the star doesn’t give off 1/10th of the light our sun does.
So an extrasolar planet discovered 3,000 light years away orbiting a very small star doesn’t really hit the jack pot on discovering a habitable planet. It may, it may not but it shows us that smaller stars like MOA-2007-BLG-192L do have smaller extrasolar planets closer to the size of Earth. It the next ten years I think we will make a giant leap in finding extrasolar planets like MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, with technology upgrades and extrasolar planet missions and all that.

exoplanet, extrasolar planet

the 3 exoplanets around Gliese 876

In this post I am going to talk about a Gliese 876, which is host to 3 extrasolar planets. Gliese 876 is red dwarf star, which means that its fairly cool for a star burning at about 3500 kelvin, and it is estimated to have only 32% of the mass our sun has. Since it is so small Gliese 876 cannot be seen with the naked eye you would need a telescope to see it, lying in the constellation of Aquarius, Gliese 876 is about 15 light years away from us. We would’ve never expected such a small star to have habitable exo-planets about ten years ago.

In 1998 two exo-planet teams, one which was led by Geoffrey Marcy, had discovered a extrasolar-planet orbiting around Gliese 876. The planet was named Gliese 876b, and it was discovered by measuring the radial velocity of the star, as the planets gravity would tug on it. Gliese 876 is estimated to have twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits closer to its parent star then Mercury to our Sun, taking only 61 days to complete a full orbit.

The next extrasolar planet to be discovered orbiting around Gliese 876 was discovered in 2001, Gliese 876C was discovered orbiting even closer then Gliese 876B, taking it about 30 days to complete a full orbit around its parent star. This must cause a huge gravitational battle when the planets align up to each other. Gliese 876C has a little over half the mass of Jupiter.
In 2005 a third extrasolar planet was detected orbiting the red dwarf Gliese, named Gliese 876 d. Gliese 876 d is just barely inside of the habitable zone we believe, and it has about 6-7 times the mass of Earth, we think this might be a terrestrial planet. It takes Gliese 876 d about two days to orbit its parent star.
So the two gas giants orbit the red dwarf in the so called habitable zone, because these are gas giants its almost impossible for them to harbor life. But What about the large moons of Gliese B and C..(if there are any) ? There could be a moon orbiting Gliese b that could be remotely close to the mass of Earth. All the conditions could be right. Life very well possibly could be there and many more Extrasolar planets could be orbiting around the red dwarf Gliese. Time and technology will only tell if there is a extrasolar planet harboring life in the Gliese 876 solar system.

exoplanet, extrasolar planet, Gliese, Gliese876