Re: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System
Unfortunately this Earth size planet orbits its sun every 3.6 days, making it uninhabital. However, it has been suggested that other Earth size planets might exist in that sun's habitital zone. ----- Original Message ----- From: utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 23:26:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 116, Issue 55 Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com You can reach the person managing the list at utah-astronomy-owner@mailman.xmission.com When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System (Siegfried Jachmann) 2. Re: Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System (Chuck Hards) 3. Re: Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System (Joe Bauman) 4. Re: Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System (Daniel Holmes) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:51:21 -0600 From: Siegfried Jachmann <siegfried@jachmann.org> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System Message-ID: <CAH4Gk7iN-WmU=T6nuo=0cRzUUUv0NQrHk3+h_Urvabdr-Hx1iQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Fantastic On Oct 16, 2012 5:45 PM, "Wiggins Patrick" <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth
ESO?s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B
European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system ? the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO?s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.
The release, images and videos are available on: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/
patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:56:15 -0600 From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System Message-ID: <CAHmuOYpzwck0mfs=-y8EZqDg3L1WWXuBWh042PhNfsKGmKGZ-A@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I was born a thousand years too soon. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:14:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System Message-ID: <1350432892.96523.YahooMailNeo@web125104.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 "Lightest"-- that implies a gas pipsqueak, I think. -- Joe ________________________________ From: Wiggins Patrick <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> To: utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 5:44 PM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth ESO?s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system ? the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO?s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012. The release, images and videos are available on: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/ patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:26:31 -0600 From: Daniel Holmes <danielh@holmesonics.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Earth-Mass Planet Found in Nearest Star System Message-ID: <734B8009-2526-4207-9940-C2E4C3B0949A@holmesonics.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Interesting that a few days after Baumgartner breaks the warp barrier, we discover a planet orbiting the system Zephram Cochrane retired to. Coincidence? I think not! Patrick--I've heard that this news was broken prematurely due to a Croatian astronomer breaking the embargo on this press release. Nature and ESO wanted to release this tomorrow with lots of science writers backing this up with more information...do you know anything about that? (I guess I'm asking if in your role with NASA if you get this type of info early as well) Thanks, Dan On Oct 16, 2012, at 5:44 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth
ESO?s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B
European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system ? the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO?s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.
The release, images and videos are available on: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/
patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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-- Daniel Holmes, danielh@holmesonics.com "Laugh while you can, monkey boy!" -- Lord John Whorfin ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php End of Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 116, Issue 55 ***********************************************
Starwatch: A darker darkest before the dawn http://www.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1514416 Posted: Nov 09, 2012, 7:42 am When most folks think of stargazing, they think of going out after dinner, taking in the stars, finding constellations, and maybe poking a telescope at something celestial. That's wonderful, but let me remind you that stargazing is also a wonderful way to start your day - although it takes great discipline to get your derriere out of that nice warm bed. Believe me, I know that first-hand. Once you get past that hurdle and get a nice big cup of coffee, you can really enjoy the show. In fact, the next few weeks the Rochester morning sky will be a better show than the evening. First off, the wonderful winter constellations dominate most of the southern half of the sky from about midnight on. As it draws closer to morning twilight, the bright constellation Orion the Hunter and his surrounding gang of constellations shift over to the southwest heavens. These constellations, like Orion, Taurus, Gemini, and others, are the best of the year in this stargazer's opinion. I never get tired of seeing them. In January, as the Earth continues its orbit around the sun, Orion and his gang will dominate the evening sky, so consider your view of them in the morning this week as preview of great evening stargazing to come. Nestled in those bright winter constellations is the very bright planet Jupiter, nearing its closest approach to Earth in 2012. More on the Jovian monster planet in the coming weeks in Starwatch. While you're morning stargazing this week you may see a few more meteors or "shooting stars" than normal. That's because the annual Leonid meteor shower is building and will peak next weekend. The Leonids are not the best meteor shower of the year, but I would put them in the upper tier. What makes them attractive this year is that there's no moonlight in the early-morning hours, leaving a much darker backdrop in the sky for catching those "falling stars". Annual Meteor showers like the Leonids occur when the Earth, in its orbit around the sun, plows into debris left behind a comet. Comets are more or less "dirty snowballs" of rock and ice that orbit the sun in highly elliptical elongated orbits. When their orbits take them close to the sun, they partially melt, leaving a debris trail made up of generally tiny particles from the size of dust grains to small pebbles, about the size of small marbles. The comet that fuels the Leonid Meteor Shower is called Temple Tuttle that last came by this part of the solar system in 1998 and won't return again until 2031. The Earth in its solar orbit is busting into this trail at 66,000 mph, and at the same time these individual comet-debris particlesare whizzing along in their orbit at thousands of miles an hour as well. This means that the debris can crash into our atmosphere at speeds over 150,000 mph! With that kind of speed, individual particles quickly burn up due to tremendous air friction and we see the quick streaks of light decorate the celestial dome. The light we see isn't the because of the combustion of the debris. There's no way you could see that because these tiny particles are burning up anyway from 50 to 150 miles high. The streak we see is the glowing column of air being chemically excited by the particle that's ripping through it. Sometimes you see different colors in these streaks that indicate the kinds of gas in our atmosphere that are being temporarily aroused. Meteors in a meteor shower are best seen after midnight, because that's when you're on the side of the rotating Earth that's plowing into the comet debris. It's kind of like driving cross county on a warm summer night. You get more bugs smashed on your front windshield than you do on your rear window. After midnight we're facing the "front windshield" of the traveling Earth. The Leonid meteor shower is called the Leonids because the meteors seem to emanate from the general direction in the sky where the constellation Leo the Lion is poised. After midnight, Leo is hanging in the eastern sky and looks like a backward question mark. That makes Leo the radiant of this meteor shower. That doesn't mean that you should restrict your meteor-hunting to just that area of the heavens. If you do, you'll miss many of them because he meteors can show up anywhere in the sky. You know they're part of the Leonids because their "tails" seem to point back in the general direction of Leo the Lion. The best way to watch for the Leonids or any other meteor shower is to lie back on a lawn chair with blankets sometime after midnight, preferably after 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. Roll your eyes all around the night sky and see how many meteors you spot in a given hour. It's a fun group or family activity because you can keep each other awake and have multiple eyes all around the heavens. Have a great time and keep each other awake!
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