Astronomers Upset the Theory of Planetary Formation
Tim Lister and Rachel Street, project scientists at the UCSB-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. (Credit: George Foulsham, Public Affairs, UCSB)
The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.
Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.
These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.
“Planet evolution theorists now have to explain how so many planets came to be orbiting like this,” said Tim Lister, a project scientist at LCOGT. Lister leads a major part of the observational campaigns along with Rachel Street of LCOGT, Andrew Cameron of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Didier Queloz, of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.
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32 New Exoplanets Found
On Oct. 19, 2009, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-meter telescope, reported on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS's position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. One of these is surrounding the star Gliese 667 C, which belongs to a triple system. The six Earth-mass exoplanet circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other low-mass stars, which are seen here in the distance. (ESO/L. Calçada)
“HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds,” says Stéphane Udry, who made the announcement. “We have now completed our initial five-year programme, which has succeeded well beyond our expectations.”
The latest batch of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems. In particular, thanks to its amazing precision, the search for small planets, those with a mass of a few times that of the Earth — known as super-Earths and Neptune-like planets — has been given a dramatic boost. HARPS has facilitated the discovery of 24 of the 28 planets known with masses below 20 Earth masses. As with the previously detected super-Earths, most of the new low-mass candidates reside in multi-planet systems, with up to five planets per system. (more…)
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