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PlanetQuest

  1. 32 Planets discovered! The count is now above 400, and who knows what Kepler's first set of results might bring...Props to the HARPS team!
  2. Also - WASP-18 b, which has the distinction of being the first dying planet found - it's got 1 mil. yrs. before SMACK - right into its star.
  3. Meanwhile, CoRoT has discovered the first confirmed terrestrial exoplanet! It's one of two super-Earth size planets that orbit the star.
  4. Ok, I'm back, and the planet news has piled up! For starters, cross WASP-9 off the exoplanet list - looks like it's actually a binary star.
  5. @LJespersen Transiting means that it passes directly between its star and the Earth - a pretty rare occurrence, most planets don't do that
  6. Now we've got a GIANT (biggest yet) planet that orbits the wrong way! The universe is apparently full of bad drivers. http://is.gd/2fz9u
  7. Wild week for exoplanets...first there was the planet train wreck discovered by Spitzer... http://is.gd/2fyU2
  8. @Adriana_Raven You just need the main Yahoo widgets program - http://widgets.yahoo.com/up... - download it there.
  9. @LJespersen Transiting planets are already really difficult to find, so a multi-planet system w/ 1 trans. planet is like winning the lotto!
  10. @justinf If you go to : http://is.gd/2fyvr, you can look up just about any planet and find its constellation, plus a bunch of other info....
  11. In this case,"b" is a roasting hot Jupiter with a 3-day orbit, and "c" is a portly 15xJupiter-mass planet with a super-eccentric orbit.
  12. HAT-13-b and c have people pretty excited-it's the first time a multi-planet system with one transiting planet has been discovered!
  13. @justinf HD 16760 could be a brown dwarf, which is bigger than a planet, but not quite massive enough to fuse hydrogen like a star.
  14. Another new one, HD 110014b, is a little bit smaller @ 11 Jup masses, and has a pretty eccentric, egg-shaped orbit around its star.
  15. New planets! HD 16760 is a whopping 14-Jupiter mass planet with a year about 100 days longer than Earth's. Massive!
  16. Interviewed Greg Laughlin about a planet that might serve as an extra gas tank that'll reignite its star...it's the top story on PlanetQuest
  17. @buffalodavid Right on!
  18. Anybody checked out Greg Laughlin's blog at oklo.org? It's dope...well-written, cool photos, and lots of stuff to ponder....
  19. Also had some folks announce that they'd observed the phases of an exoplanet as it orbited in front of and then behind its host star...whoa!
  20. PlanetQuest isn't dead! We've had a few new planet additions, and some interesting finds...like an exoplanet in Andromeda...maybe???