Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System

This visualization, produced using the Hayden Planetarium's Digital Universe--the most comprehensive and scientifically accurate, three-dimensional map of the known universe-- shows where the star HR 8799 is in relation to our solar system. Recently, a team of researchers led by the American Museum of Natural History used a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640 (www.amnh.org/project1640) to collect the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of the four red exoplanets orbiting this star. This visualization also shows other stars that are known to harbor planetary systems (stars with blue circles around them). HR 8799's system, which is 128 light years away from Earth, is one of only a couple of these stars that have been imaged, and the only one for which spectroscopy of all the planets has been obtained. Over the next three years, the team will survey many of these other stars in the same manner in which they studied HR 8799.

Music by Gurdonark (http://ccmixter.org/files/gurdonark/2...)
using Creative Commons Attribution samples by Kaer Trouz and the Institute of Contemporary Music

• Category

  Science & Technology

[ryangscott]

It almost brings me to tears when I see glimpses of how vast our universe is. It might only be a digital animation, but it gives a taste of how profoundly isolated and fragile we are.

[JabberCT]

SCIENCE!

[wakcedout]

Seeing these comments just confirms the fact that we are not ready for the stays....and is most likely why aliens stay away from us. Its not that humanity is a virus, no it is that we need to grow up and stop acting like children. Read your own comments as if they were someone elses and then you will see this. If you truely feel we are a virus then you should be supporting wars which cause death, the ultimate cure to any disease....

[kenoh89]

Education can not fix what is in our genetics! We humans destroyed many species and continue to do so more than any virus will ever will!

[Αθανάσιος Θεοδώρου]

The cure is education.

[kenoh89]

yay! all the planets man wishes to colonize take over! Question is will it be a white man this time or black? Something tells me it's the latter!

[kenoh89]

Right! and we'll multiply and consume every last conceivable thing on that planet and move on to the next. "Humans are a Virus in need of a cure"

[Awbrfg55]

The way people love to deny reality simply baffles me. I "better go talk to someone". So basically, you are saying I need psychological help for coming to the completely innocuous conclusion that human beings, and more importantly, white people, I want to make that absolutely clear, are walking bags of shit, literally, figuratively, and metaphorically. Simply incredible. I live in reality not la-la land like you probably do. And no it does not get much worse than this. It's been bad from birth.

[shapetwist]

you better go talk to someone about your shit, its only gonna get worse from 22 out

[leyerson]

BEAUTIFUL!

[newmanfrigan]

This amazing Universe is our Mother and Father. Our home is here!

[Silly Salope]

DONT MASTURBATE