Posts Tagged ‘hubble’

Fomalhaut B

Posted: 13 November 2008 in Uncategorized
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Hubble has captured a visible-spectrum image of a planet revolving around Fomalhaut.  Previously planets had only been observed indirectly, such as when the planet passes between Earth and the star.  Fomalhaut is close enough that Hubble was able to catch a glimpse of the highly reflective giant planet, which is about three times the size of Jupiter and tens times as far from Fomalhaut as Saturn is from the sun.

Check out the video for more info.

Hubble captures first visible image of an extra solar planet

Hubble captures first visible image of an extra solar planet

Update:  I originally misspelled this is as “Formalhaut,” a mistake I’ve been making ever since I was a kid and always forget.

Rumors are brewing that Microsoft is going to announce the release of a new product called Worldwide Telescope later this month. WT should allow users to zoom in on parts of the sky for which data exists. Data will be drawn from a number of ground-based telescopes as well as Hubble. Google Sky does this already in a nauseatingly ugly way. It’s bad. Epic fail there. Stellarium, on the other hand, is an open source star charting program that blows Google Sky away. I’ve been using it for a few years now and have been very happy with it. From the sound of the TechCrunch article, though, Worldwide Telescope could blow Stellarium away. I really hope so. And if it’s free, I’ll be forced to give Microsoft props for doing something right for a change.