Fomalhaut b, the first fuzzy exoplanet ?

Our universe is huge, very huge and very fascinating. Full of unknown life (who knows ???), it hides its own secret but by revealing some pieces, scientists discover extraordinary solar systems which amaze us and we want to know them better. Scientists use their intelligence and imagination to find out the why and how. For the majority of the normal persons, you and me, we can just wonder with the incredible pictures provided by them to let flow our imagination until the infinite. 2 teams of astronomers has been able to capture pictures of a planet circling another star with the NASA's

Hubble Space Telescope and two ground-based telescopes. Its name is “Fomalhaut b” orbiting the bright southern star Fomalhaut and it is estimated to possess more than three times Jupiter's mass and not habitable. Trillions of miles away from us but only 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis (the Southern Fish), Fomalhaut name is based from the arabic language and it means “mouth of the fish”.

In the 1980s, IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite) of NASA discovered an excess of dust around the star and scientists suspected that a planet is hidden inside. After research, they found out that the ring is offset from the center of the star and Hubble photographed a dot light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge.

Yesterday - november 13, 2008, they released the photo of the planet “Fomalhaut b” located 10.7 billion miles from the star. It can be surrounded by a ring of ice and dust which reflects the starlight and that is the reason why it is brighter than an object of 3 jupiter masses and eventually, the ring might coalesce to form moons.

The star “Fomalhaut” is much hotter than our sun and 16 times brighter. Scientists described it like a burning hydrogen which will burn out in only 1 billion years – equivalent at 1/10th the lifespan of our sun.

After the release, some experts are not convinced that those pictures represent the first exoplanet photos like Alan Boss (expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington) and Lisa Kaltenegger (exoplanet hunter at Harvard) who said that more study needs to be done before to confirm a proven planet or a brown dwarf star.

And others like Sara Seager (MIT planetary scientist) said “everybody would agree is a planet” during the NASA press conference.

From the experts, the photos look fuzzy and the answer from the teams is that the main reason is that the star is 100 million time brighter than its planet.

I don’t know for you but it doesn’t like fuzzy for me !!! If you want the full details and discover better our universe, check out like me the Hubble website.

November 14, 2008