Extrasolar Planet Gliese 667 Cb (2009) [720p]

On October 19, 2009, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESOs 3.6-meter telescope, reported on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS's position as the world's foremost exoplanet hunter. One of these is surrounding the star Gliese 667 C, which belongs to a triple system. The 6 Earth-mass exoplanet circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other low-mass stars, which are seen here in the distance.

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-meter 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 star's 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 program soon proved very successful. Using HARPS, Mayor's 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 (CoRoT-7b), with density similar to that of the Earth's.

credit: ESO/Luis Calçada

source: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso0939b/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• HARPS
• ESO
• exoplanet
• exoplanets
• spectrograph
• extrasolar planets
• Gliese 667
• Gliese 667 C

[AaaaghJOE]

some people are really stupid. ty djx for explaining to them

[djxatlanta]

@AaaaghJOE - it's more effective in person when I get to do my *snap-snap* =)

[TrueHamal]

Why do they do these researches when we can find exo-planets using WWT, Google Sky, Wikisky, and so on? Why do they say exo-planets cant' be seen excepted in the way they do their researches? Why do they lie to the People?

[djxatlanta]

@TrueHamal - dude, what the f*ck are you talking about? The vast majority of planets discovered so far are only detectable indirectly by either carefully watching their gravitational effects on their parent stars over the course of months or years or by waiting to see if they happen to transit their parent stars (like an eclipse). Only a small fraction -- perhaps only a half dozen or so -- have been imaged directly either by Hubble or large ground-based observatories.

[1700tt]

you really can't see stars when your in space. It's for cinematic purposes only why do it in movies and such.

[djxatlanta]

@1700tt - just as on Earth, it depends on the viewing conditions... if you're in a spacecraft with bright interior illumination, you would not see any stars looking outside a porthole. If all the lights were switched off and astronauts' eyes were accustomed to the dark, then absolutely you would see stars -- more clearly than most places on Earth (save for extremely remote and dry locations).

[rwp041980]

Has anyone seen the movie Pandorum?  Good sci fi movie.

[rwp041980]

We need Dennis Quaid, Cam Gigandet, Ben Foster and Cung Le and 59,996 more people to make a huge gothic looking spaceship and put them in suspended animation.

[TrueHamal]

@djxatlanta

You are the only one.

[Nickah37]

@TrueHamal You can't seriously be that stupid...?

[shtuphJT]

Well...that was boring.

[ironmaiden0902]

@SkullSyker i hope we have the technology to go time space warp, but what if deadly races resides in those worlds?, might be a death trap

[TrueHamal]

@FFVNet

Maybe you are the more stupid man among us.

[geneskin]

ive heard that there is aready some polish people living on gliese 667cb

[FFVNet]

@TrueHamal Your stupid everything on google sky has already been discovered. They are pics of the universe taken by NASA or who evers telescopes