Exoplanets Galore - 32 New Extrasolar Planets Found

Science & Reason on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ScienceReason

ESOcast 11: 32 New Extrasolar Planets Found.

On 19 October 2009, at an international ESO/CAUP exoplanet conference in Porto, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-metre telescope, reports on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS's position as the worlds foremost exoplanet hunter.

This result also increases the number of known low-mass planets by an impressive 30%. Over the past five years HARPS has spotted more than 75 of the roughly 400 or so exoplanets now known.

---
Please subscribe to Science & Reason:
• http://www.youtube.com/Best0fScience
• http://www.youtube.com/ScienceMagazine
• http://www.youtube.com/ScienceTV
• http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker
---

"HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds," says Stéphane Udry, who made the announcement. We have now completed our initial five-year programme, which has succeeded well beyond our expectations.

The latest batch of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems.

In particular, thanks to its amazing precision, the search for small planets, those with a mass of a few times that of the Earth — known as super-Earths and Neptune-like planets — has been given a dramatic boost. HARPS has facilitated the discovery of 24 of the 28 planets known with masses below 20 Earth masses. As with the previously detected super-Earths, most of the new low-mass candidates reside in multi-planet systems, with up to five planets per system.

In 1999, ESO launched a call for opportunities to build a high resolution, extremely precise spectrograph for the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. Michel Mayor, from the Geneva Observatory, led a consortium to build HARPS, which was installed in 2003 and was soon able to measure the back-and-forward motions of stars by detecting small changes in a stars radial velocity — as small as 3.5 km/hour, a steady walking pace.

Such a precision is crucial for the discovery of exoplanets and the radial velocity method, which detects small changes in the radial velocity of a star as it wobbles slightly under the gentle gravitational pull from an (unseen) exoplanet, has been most prolific method in the search for exoplanets.

In return for building the instrument, the HARPS consortium was granted 100 observing nights per year during a five-year period to carry out one of the most ambitious systematic searches for exoplanets so far implemented worldwide by repeatedly measuring the radial velocities of hundreds of stars that may harbour planetary systems.

The programme soon proved very successful. Using HARPS, Mayors team discovered — among others — in 2004, the first super-Earth (around µ Ara); in 2006, the trio of Neptunes around HD 69830; in 2007, Gliese 581d, the first super Earth in the habitable zone of a small star; and in 2009, the lightest exoplanet so far detected around a normal star, Gliese 581e. More recently, they found a potentially lava-covered world, with density similar to that of the Earths.

"These observations have given astronomers a great insight into the diversity of planetary systems and help us understand how they can form", says team member Nuno Santos.

The HARPS consortium was very careful in their selection of targets, with several sub-programmes aimed at looking for planets around solar-like stars, low-mass dwarf stars, or stars with a lower metal content than the Sun. The number of exoplanets known around low-mass stars — so-called M dwarfs — has also dramatically increased, including a handful of super Earths and a few giant planets challenging planetary formation theory.

"By targeting M dwarfs and harnessing the precision of HARPS we have been able to search for exoplanets in the mass and temperature regime of super-Earths, some even close to or inside the habitable zone around the star", says co-author Xavier Bonfils.

Read more: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-39-09.html

---

ESOcast is produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory. ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy designing, constructing and operating the worlds most advanced ground-based telescopes.

• http://www.eso.org/
.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Exoplanets
• Galore
• 32
• New
• Extrasolar
• Planets
• Found
• ESOcast
• 11
• ESO
• European
• Southern
• Observatory
• CAUP
• international
• exoplanet
• conference
• Porto
• hunter
• HARPS
• High
• Accuracy
• Radial
• Velocity
• Planet
• Searcher
• spectrograph
• astronomy
• ESA
• NASA
• Hubble
• Space
• Telescopes
• Universe
• Galaxies
• Nebulae
• Milky
• Way
• Solar
• System
• Stars
• International
• Year
• of
• Astronomy
• 2009
• discovering
• alien
• worlds
• planetary
• systems
• super
• Earths
• Neptune
• like
• Gliese
• 667
• La
• Silla
• astronomers
• consortium
• solar
• Suns
• M-dwarfs
• theory
• Jupiter

[jethr088]

That's fucking AWESOME!

[AlienPositron]

Life is rather common; intelligent life considerably less so.

[TheFocomo]

I love how they got the coolest looking geek in the lab to do the presentation.

[TheChristianRight09]

@Ksixstring science the how, Christianity IS THE WHY...

[Ksixstring]

i dnt understand hw ppl can be religious after watching this.

[cocktaliana]

Then it goes away in certain spaces, the surface rotate as it's normal, but in certain period of time the planet gets closer and closer like a sink with water and heavy materials, but because of that and the heavy materials going thru the orbit and the planet rotation looks like the heavy metals and compositions are going to do contact but the magnetic field of the planet and the sun erratic fields make me think that mercury has a concentration of elements more in one side than the other, that

[cocktaliana]

I am a mix of pure Mayan and half French Spanish, thanks to 5 de mayo, I been always interested in the stars the sun and the life, not good with school, but 8 years in education, I know a lot thanks to books,it took me 2 years to write english and 4 to speak, I been in the shadows for a while, but I found a problem with our solar system,All the planets got a course to rotate, and I saw that mercury got a different rotation,most of time it passes very close to the sun...

[Zurround100]

its a real shame that we can barely see the planets, seeing detail meaning evidence of LIFE is basically impossible. Imagine if alien beings a hundred light years away could barely see the EARTH, no way in hell they would be able to see US on it....

[MochizMuM]

Dr .  j you are adorable lol.

[mcplanetearth]

watch?v=b6tZLkIRpJU Watch this vid for some awesome renditions  of tidally locked worlds. Thanx Be sure to watch in 720p

[Shenlonbe]

i wanna see real pictures or movies !!!!!!!!!