Monday, February 16, 2009

Another discovery

I'm not sure exactly how I missed this piece of news (in fact, I only found it by checking Harvard's news releases), but almost a month ago it seems that the HATnet team announced the discovery of another large exoplanet, HAT-P-11 b. It is apparently another large gas giant similar to their first discovery.

There's an interesting simulation of the planet orbiting its star here. As one can see, it possesses a rather eccentric orbit.

It would appear that large planets are much easier to discover, when HATnet's success is compared with other teams. Perhaps larger objects are more likely to cause a noticeable distortion (the wobble) to the star they orbit; this would fall in line with what physics would predict.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, I really liked the video of the planet's orbit. I especially liked the fact that you can view as little or as much info as you liked. Very nice. i wish my scientist had something like that with jellyfish.

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