Humanity Captures First Photo of an Extrasolar Planet

[Dan Dixon]

Humanity has detected more than 300 planets orbiting distant stars, but we've taken a visible light photo of a planet orbiting another star for the very first time. This is awesome.



Details
The Fomalhaut System is where the planet was photographed. Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the sky and only 25 light years away, everyone has either seen light from this star that originated in their lifetime or will likely have that opportunity in the future.

You may have heard claims of 'visible light extrasolar planet photo' in the past, but their validity was seriously questioned. This claim is widely accepted.

Find Fomalhaut in Universe Sandbox
Open up Universe Sandbox, then open the system 'Constellation'. Press Ctrl+f to open the Find Tool, and then type 'fom'. You'll fly right to it. It's not that far away from our Sun.

Simulated Fomalhaut system coming in the next update

Haven't downloaded Universe Sandbox yet?
http://universesandbox.com/download/

Graphic
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/11/14/science/space/20081114_PLANET_GRAPHIC.html

NASA Press Conference Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXKz4nxyPqw | 10 minutes

Articles
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081113-hubble-exoplanet.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/science/space/14planet.html

Fomalhaut - the Star
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomalhaut

Extrasolar Planets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet

[eric2400]

About a month or so ago i stumbled upon an article about a photographed extrasolar planet: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050430_exoplanet_image.html
Apparently there have been a couple other photos taken over the last year or so but i guess those images were controversial so they were never really publicized.

I read about Fomalhaut B yesterday when i found out they discovered new extrasolar planets (I have a nifty little side bar tool that tells me what current extrasolar planet count is and the latest planet discovered).  According to the article about Fomalhaut B, the image that the Hubble Space Telescope took the other day was the first visible-light image of an extrasolar planet. 

I just thought it was interesting to point out! 

[APODman]

I know that currently the Universe Sandbox can simulate rings of massless dust around planets that interact with other bodies with gravitational mass, but its characteristics are predefined.

It would be possible in a future update to create a mechanism that could generate dust rings with orbital elements (size, eccentricity, inclination, ...) defined by the user to generate simulations of planetary nebulae and study the effects of the presence of a planet in orbit within this disk ( like the case of Formalhaut ) ?


[] 'S

[Dan Dixon]

It would be possible in a future update to create a mechanism that could generate dust rings with orbital elements (size, eccentricity, inclination, ...) defined by the user to generate simulations of planetary nebulae and study the effects of the presence of a planet in orbit within this disk ( like the case of Formalhaut ) ?

Yes. Absolutely. This will be in the next minor release.

[APODman]

Fantastic !

I'm really anxious for this upgrade !

Some idea when it will be released?


[ ]´s

[atomic7732]

It would be possible in a future update to create a mechanism that could generate dust rings with orbital elements (size, eccentricity, inclination, ...) defined by the user to generate simulations of planetary nebulae and study the effects of the presence of a planet in orbit within this disk ( like the case of Formalhaut ) ?

Yes. Absolutely. This will be in the next minor release.

AWESOME!

[Zurack]

Wow! It's incredible how the Exoplanet Science is advancing so fast! Maybe I'm going to do a gallery of Exoplanet images to use as a screensaver  .

Oh,

It would be possible in a future update to create a mechanism that could generate dust rings with orbital elements (size, eccentricity, inclination, ...) defined by the user to generate simulations of planetary nebulae and study the effects of the presence of a planet in orbit within this disk ( like the case of Formalhaut ) ?

Yes. Absolutely. This will be in the next minor release.

AWESOME! 

[monmarfori]

Fomalhaut is discovered in November 2008.
I like that
 
 

[avadod]

it's taking a long time to orbit