Sep 18 2008The First Glimpse Of An Actual Alien Planet

First too see it!

I hope its a planet full of steampunks.

I see Obi Wan giving us the finger

@3, No, he's just jacking off over a Jawa corpse

A steampunk planet- wasn't that pretty much what the movie Robots was about?

@4, I hate it when the Force gets in my eye.

@6, Especially when its the dark side.

That's beautiful. Thanks for drawing our attention to this. One thing, if you track back through the sources for this picture, one of the articles says that this is the first photo of a planet orbiting a "sun-like" star. There was another planet photographed in 2004, but that was orbiting a brown-dwarf star.

It's believed to be 8x the *mass* of Jupiter, but roughly the same size. Very cool.

soooooo .. this thing is real or a joke ?
i don't get it !

"Something, something something dark side."

"Something something something complete."

@11 - Classic.

@9 Actually, strangely enough, once a planet or star or any large ball of mostly hydrogen gets to be as massive as Jupiter, but not massive enough to fuse hydrogen, it's radius stays fairly constant!

On an order of magnitude basis, when you cram mass into a ball, the radius scales as R~M^(1/3) for something made of mostly the same stuff (say, the rocky planets). But when you cram enough hydrogen gas together BEFORE you get a star (say, a Jupiter or Saturn mass planet or brown dwarf) the gas enters a degenerate state, causing the Radius to be nearly invariant with the mass of the planet or dwarf. This is of course not EXACT, there is some give and take, but on an order-of-magnitude basis they are nearly the same radius. Compare Jupiter and Saturn vs. say Mercury and Earth (which have similar density, so mostly same stuff so R~M^(1/3), more or less)

http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topics/planets/GiantGaseousPlanets.html

Gives a pretty good explanation.

Star Trekking. nice.
maybe well see doctor who.

So, I do not really understand the key. What does this 1 inch mean in relation to this sun and planet?

They are very small.

is this what happens after global warming?

http://www.ihateyoujulia.com/?id=4cc2b15cbe577b8efefdb4141ced699b

#13 shoot yourself, in the face, it's called geekologie, not virgin-nerdology........
get it right, nerd is not the same as geek...

*big sigh*
This is way too old, other planet have been seen/discovered, 8*jupiter size means it is a gaseous planet (ie no surface, no rocks), some other rocky planet have been seen, and some even got their atmosphere analysed.
google for spitzer , owl and old hubble.

I love that (North/East) in the picture, you draw them yourself ? [/sarcasm]

Ginormagantuan... shoot yourself... whats wrong with a little info? and like im gonna believe ur not a virgin

#19, too much info, who cares, I wasn't saying I am not a virgin........ was i trying to make you believe I wasn't?

When will the class war between the geeks and nerds finally end?

that wasnt there until the Hardon collider was turned on see what science and robots cause>>????

Well, if Pluto wasn't allowed to be a planet in our SS - it will just go group up with these guys!

So this planet is a lot smaller than 1 inch, and its 8x the size of Jupiter. That means Jupiter is much much smaller than 1 inch.

I wonder if they have a planet that's as big as Uranus? Much like Uranus I bet its a gas giant, with a soft pock marked surface, having a noxious atmosphere and also sporting several rings.

Fake!

Thats a complete photoshop job. You can tell because the shadows are all wrong.

MAKE ME A PLANET AGAIN YOU ASSHOLES!

Astronomy has always intrigued me. Cool stuff.

I agree with 25 accept for the part where she says Fake before me. I'm sure Isaw this in the movie Never Back Down.

There! I finally gave in and said it! I feel like a hundred dollars cash now.....Feeling passed and now feeling myself in a secsyoual way.

Hey, go F yourselves everyone! Feeling great again!

@19 Uh, yeah... Isn't that what I said? The mass is greater, but roughly the same size?

Daisy is looking for attention again... if she can't get it by being witty, she'll get it by being irritating and repeating the same lame ass comments over and over... so sad...

I was under the impression that Jupiter would be a red dwarf if it had a little more mass (little in galactic terms)? I'm about as far away from being an expert on this subject as this planet is from Earth though. Still, #13, thanks for the info. That was really interesting.

1" = 1 arcsecond

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcsecond

Very very small, skywise. Usually about the limit of seeing due to atmospheric turbulence w/out Adaptive Optics.

"E"xcept, jerk.

Ginormagantuan, stow it. Maybe it's "too much" info for you. Some of us are actually science majors though. And I'm sorry if you feel threatened by that.

MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI
MAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOIMAHBOI

Now we find the planet, then life, then intelligent life.
We are nearing to complete this phase and meet with extrateristerial life beings.2012
Be ready for space ride, meet the enterprise and the space federation.
Bangalore-India

@26 It's okay Pluto, i'm not a planet either