Pink Alien Planet Is Smallest Photographed Around Sun-Like Star

[Eugene]

Source: SPACE.com

Pink Alien Planet Is Smallest Photographed Around Sun-Like Star

by Megan Gannon, News Editor | August 06, 2013 11:32am ET

Astronomers have snapped a photo of a pink alien world that's the smallest yet exoplanet found around a star like our sun.

The alien planet GJ 504b is a colder and bluer world than astronomers had anticipated and it likely has a dark magenta hue, infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii revealed.

"If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta," study researcher Michael McElwain, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement from the space agency.

"Our near-infrared camera reveals that its color is much more blue than other imaged planets, which may indicate that its atmosphere has fewer clouds," McElwain added.

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Read more: http://www.space.com/22265-small-alien-planet-direct-photo.html

[BlueJazz]

2. Deleted the above message 'cause one person does not have the slightest idea ...

...about sarcasm or satire and will freak out.

[newfie11]

3. Beautiful

[sakabatou]

4. Looks like a bowling ball I saw once.

[FiveGoodMen]

5. Just waiting for someone to photoshop three holes in it.

[Lugal Zaggesi]

6. I like that they are studying nearby Sun-like stars

but it's too young to have interesting life in that solar system, even if they found a smaller, suitable planet:

(from article)

The exoplanet orbits the bright star GJ 504, which is 57 light-years from Earth, slightly hotter than the sun and faintly visible to the naked eye in the constellation Virgo. The star system is relatively young at roughly 160 million years old. (For comparison, Earth's system is 4.5 billion years old).

But the same technique could be used on close-by Sun-like stars that are around 4 or 5 billion years old, like our star:

Direct imaging can help scientists measure an alien planet's luminosity, temperature, atmosphere and orbit, but it's difficult to detect faint planets next to their bright parent stars. The study's leader, Masayuki Kuzuhara of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said the task is "like trying to take a picture of a firefly near a searchlight."

Two of the Subaru Telescope's tools in particular — the High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next Generation Adaptive Optics and the InfraRed Camera and Spectrograph — help scientists tease out light from these faint exoplanet sources.

They will be looking for components like oxygen and methane that would not remain in the atmosphere without a constant recycling, such as Life does for the atmosphere.

http://www.space.com/19182-earth-like-alien-planet-discovery-meaning.html
Alien Earth: What It Will Mean to Find Our Planet's Twin
January 09, 2013

Paradigm shift

And when we do find the first world out there like our own, it will change the way many think of our place in the universe. If our planet isn't unique, why should life there be unique, either?

[theHandpuppet]

7. Homeworld of our new Barbie overlords

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/08/08/new-astronaut-barbie-sports-pink-space-boots/