A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting
A 12-year sequence of telescope images shows four massive exoplanets orbiting the star HR 8799, 133 light-years away.
summary is enough The core value is the visual evidence of orbital motion, which is well-summarized and discussed in the thread.
summary
Telescope data over 12 years captured the movement of four exoplanets, each larger than Jupiter, orbiting the star HR 8799. The resulting animations are created by interpolating a small number of static images (roughly 10) using Kepler's laws to simulate smooth motion. This direct imaging is possible because the planets are massive and orbit far from their host star, allowing them to be distinguished from the star's glare.
key points
- The system consists of four planets more massive than Jupiter orbiting HR 8799, located 133 light-years away.
- The animations are not continuous video but interpolations of approximately 10 static images taken over 12 years.
- Direct imaging is enabled by the planets' large size and wide orbits (some beyond Pluto's distance from the Sun).
- The blacked-out center of the images is a coronagraph used to block the star's intense luminosity, not the physical size of the star.
who should read it
Space enthusiasts and those interested in exoplanet detection and direct imaging techniques.
discussion warm
consensus
Commenters are awestruck by the visual evidence but emphasize that the animations are heavily interpolated from sparse data points rather than being continuous footage.
pushback
Some users initially mistook the coronagraph's blackout zone for the physical size of the star, leading to a brief debate on stellar dimensions.
The scale bar (20 AU) represents 20 time the distance between the Earth and the sun. This star is about 41 parsecs away, so the angular size of that scale bar is about half an arcsec. (One degree is split into 60 arcminutes, one arcminute into 60 arcseconds. Just like a clock).
That angle is about the diameter of a US quarter coin seen from 11km (7mi) away.
Provides a concrete scale for the angular resolution involved, comparing the image's scale bar to seeing a US quarter from 11km away.
Generated by an LLM from the article and thread. Check the sources before relying on it.