Finding a Needle in a Celestial Haystack
December 1st 2011 05:52
Category: extrasolar planets
Beta Pictoris image ESO
The art of discovering new planets or distant Solar System is like searching for the proverbial
needle in a haystack.
The odds of finding a distant solar system billions ok kilometres away are daunting,persistence and dedication can be rewarding.
The professional astronomer the task of finding distant planets is made somewhat easier.
Case in point better professional astronomers in general have access to larger telescopes, using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Access to massive data from super computers.
When an amateur astronomer finds a distant solar system it’s like winning the lottery.
An amateur astronomer in New Zealand lays claim to finding a Solar System orbiting a star called Beta Pictoris.
Beta Pictoris is located in the constellation Pictor. The star is located 63.4 light years from our solar system and is the second brightest star in that constellation.
It took a great deal of patience to get the image to reveal it’s “hidden secrets.”
Their is a high probability that Beta Pictoris has some large planets orbiting the massive star.
Large planets are relatively easy to find, any large planet will cause the parent star to “wobble” the wobble effect is caused by gravitational forces exerted by the planet making the star wobble on it axis. A star’s wobble can be tracked by telescopes on Earth.That is how most exosolar planets are discovered.
Beta Pictoris is relativly young star at just 12 million years old, less than three-thousandths of the age of the Sun, Beta Pictoris is 75% more massive than our Sun. Beta Pictoris has some of the tell tail signs that a massive planet is orbiting the star.
One of the major challanges associated with finding extreemly dim objects is that are washed out by the star’s brillance.
Beta Pictoris is extremely bright, any dim object orbiting the star would not register in the image.
Astronomers use various techniques to “blot out” most of the stars massive light in order to see if there are any other objects in orbit.
The New Zealand amateur used a series of images taken through a 10 inch telescope.
Picture: Courtesy of Rolf Olsen / PBase
This image was taken by Rolf Olsen from NewZealand.
The star's light was subtracted shows a thin dust shroud around the star
By using multiple images of the star it is possible to subtract the stars’ over all brilliance.
By using this technique it s possible to see much finer details like planetary dust or planets orbiting around the star.
It just go to show what you can do with a small telescope a camera and lots of patience.
This discovery shows that even amateur astronomers can mix with the “big” boys.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by CMoreStars
Astroearth
Camera Sense
I guess patience does have its own reward.
The discoverer is Rolf Olsen.