A team of scientists, including several Canadians, have photographed three new planets around a distant star, which they are calling an "unprecedented discovery."
Christian Marois of the National Research Council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, B.C. says in the Nov. 13 issue of Science Express that this is the first time images of several planets around a star outside our solar system have been captured.
He says the discovery is a crucial step towards finding a planet like Earth.
"All major telescopes around the world will now be pointed towards this star to learn more about this fascinating new solar system." co-author Ren锟� Doyon, of Universit锟� de Montr锟絘l, said in a news release.
The three planets were captured by telescope using a sophisticated image processing technique called angular differential imaging (ADI),in which the planets' heat from their formation provided a glow that was picked up on an infrared wavelength.
"Using the ADI technique, we searched around 85 young stars of mass no greater than the Sun, and no planets were found. The next step was to search around a larger number of stars and especially those more massive than the Sun. This system is a gift from Nature. It's incredible that our first detection found not one, not two, but three planets around the same star," Doyon said.
The star, known as HR8799 is located in the constellation Pegasus and its mass is about 1.5 times that of our sun. It is about 60-million years old, much younger than ours and is located about 130 light years away from our solar system.
The star is barely visible to the human eye outside of major urban centers.
More details are available in Science express. Members of the team are:
- Christian Marois - NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria, BC
- Bruce Macintosh - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
- Travis Barman - Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ, USA
- Benjamin Zuckerman - Astronomy Dep't, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Jennifer Patience - School of Physics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
- Inseok Song - University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- David Lafreni锟絩e - Dep't of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
- Ren锟� Doyon, Department of Physics, Universit锟� de Montr锟絘l, CRAQ, Montr锟絘l, Qc
