Transcript Alien Worlds Discovered

400 years from seeing our own solar system’s
planets to seeing planets around other stars
Lets go back 400 years
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The spectacle maker’s shop
4248__dobroide__horse.cart_cobbles.mp3
Florentine rivet bone or ivory
spectacle frame late 15th c.
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it
Galileo’s telescopes
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Very crude instrument by today’s
standards.
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Magnified between 8x to 30x
He made several that he gave to his
sponsors
http://galileo.rice.edu/index.html
Replica
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it
Comparisons with a
reproduction of his telescope
First quarter moon
One of Galileo’s drawings
What he probably saw.
His telescope only
would let him see small
portions at a time.
http://www.pacifier.com/~tpope/index.htm
Galileo’s key observations
Craters on the moon
 Moons of Jupiter
 Phases of Venus
 Sunspots
 Milky Way made up of stars
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http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/galileo.html
http://www.pacifier.com/~tpope/index.htm
Star Party in 1609
"Vies des Savants Illustres" by Louis Figuier (Paris, 1870)
Let’s jump back just 40 years…
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Amateur telescopes and CCD cameras
Can now take better pictures than
professional observatories did
 Still contribute large amounts of supplemental
data to ongoing professional research
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Then & now
1967 “best” professional picture
(Kitt Peak)
The Explosion of Science, Meredeth Press
ATMoB/NSAAC member John
Boudreau, taken in 2006
http://www.spacescenes.com/
Exoplanets
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First one (confirmed) discovered in1992
Current confirmed count is 228
November’s announcement not the first ones to
be photographed
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Just the least controversial
http://exoplanets.org/
Potential exoplanets from 2004
& 2005
http://www.eso.org/
To better understand these newest
pictures we need to look at how planets
may be formed
 …and to understand that we really have to
look at how stars form as well
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Simulation of the formation of a
cluster of new stars
clickme
Orion Nebula
Referred to as a “Stellar Nursery”
 Large (25 light years in size) cloud of dust
and gas about 1270 light years away
 About 700 stars being formed
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Ages between 10,000 and 100,000 years
Flying to the Orion Nebula
New stars in the Orion nebula
Easier to see the stars in
infrared instead of visible light
And compare to our simulation
again
Another look at the formation
process
Accretion…or not!
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If our theories about planet formation are right
we expect to see new stars ringed with dust
We see just that looking at Fomalhaut
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About 25 light years from Earth
About twice the mass of our Sun
100 to 300 million years old
A coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope was
used to block the star’s light in this picture so we can
see the disc of material around it
Planets are somewhere in size between Neptune and
3 times the size of Jupiter
At the same time that Fomalhaut’s
planet was announced…
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A different set of scientists released this picture
of a star called HR 8799 (in the constellation
Pegasus)
Used a different technique call Adaptive Optics
to remove the star’s light
129 light years away
About 1.5 times the size of our sun
3 planets about 7 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter
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The star is brighter, so even though they are farther
from the star than our own Saturn, Neptune, and
Uranus, temperatures on the planets would be similar
http://www.keckobservatory.org/article.php?id=231
The End
Credits
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Pictures
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Sound effects: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/i
Music:
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New stars: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc200522/ssc2005-22b.shtml
Hubble Telescope
http://www.solarviews.com/
Joe Satriani: Hill of the Skull
Ozric Tentacles: Dance of the Loomi, There’s a Planet Here
Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime
B52s: Planet Claire, There’s a Moon in the Sky Called the Moon
Andras Schiff/Mozart: Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman
Zero 7: Polaris
Smashmouth: Who’s There
Animations:
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NASA
Hubble Telescope
Solar system formation http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/