Link Roundup

I'll admit, this may have less actual content than some of the previous entries in this blog. Think of this, maybe, as a snapshot of the last three years:

From the National Geographic News, coverage of the second "puffy planet" HATnet discovered. There's nothing here that hasn't been said before, but it does quote Bakos, and the quotes are fairly interesting.

Via the Space Telescope Science Institute, it's possible to look up in their archives when in the past Bakos has given talks for various colloquia and symposiums. They have from the previous spring's colloquia certain talks archived as videos, and Bakos' is among them.

Finally, there is another article relating to this year's discovery, through Astronomy Now. What is truly of interest, though, is at the end of the article. A new space telescope, the Kepler, is to be launched next week; its purpose is to search for extrasolar planets, particularly of Earth-like nature. One of the planets it will scrutinize will be this new discovery by HATnet, according to the article. From space, so the hope is, it will be possible to resolve more information than the currently ground-based telescope system that makes up HATnet.

On HATnet

Gáspár Bakos' major contribution to the astronomical sciences is the creation of HATnet, which is short for Hungarian-made Automated Telescope. This system, as described in the previous link, originated to track certain bright variable objects (which includes both stars and planets, among others) in the northern hemisphere's sky, without any direct assistance necessary from humans.

Bakos developed the prototype of the telescopes currently in use while an undergraduate student in Hungary. Interestingly, it was home-made; it was built using camera components.

Through this telescope network, which now includes locations in Israel, Hawaii and Arizona, an entirely new class of planet was detected in 2006.

So what's the big deal about the planets? For the next three days, I'll try to cover the basics of astronomy, the planet his network discovered, as well as the difficulty involved with detecting extrasolar planets.