Has been achieved. Previously, the existence of planets around other suns has been inferred from subtle modulation of the starlight, either as a planet gravitationally tugged its star or as a star’s light decreased when a planet eclipsed it. Now, two groups have used the Spitzer Space Telescope to directly record infrared light from eclipsing planets. planets—with the prosaic names of HD 209458b (153 light years away) and TrES-1 (489 light years away)—have circular orbits a tenth the size of Mercury’s, which makes the Jupiter-sized planets hot enough to be viewed by Spitzer. Unlike observations of other eclipsing systems, these detections relied on the planet being hidden behind the star. When the starlight was subtracted from the light of the complete system, only the planet’s IR emission remained. (D. Deming et al. , Nature 434, 740, 2005 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03507 ; D. Charbonneau et al. , Astrophys. J.,...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
1 May 2005
May 01 2005
Citation
Phillip F. Schewe; Direct detection of extrasolar planets. Physics Today 1 May 2005; 58 (5): 9. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4797017
Download citation file:
PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION
Purchase an annual subscription for $25. A subscription grants you access to all of Physics Today's current and backfile content.
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
11
Views
Citing articles via
The lessons learned from ephemeral nuclei
Witold Nazarewicz; Lee G. Sobotka
FYI science policy briefs
Lindsay McKenzie; Jacob Taylor