Scientists Capture FIRST Direct Image of Exoplanet

 

since the first exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s the number of known exoplanets has doubled approximately every 27 months to date over 4 000 exoplanets have been discovered and are considered confirmed in a startling new discovery astronomers at the university of hawaii have identified a very young and extremely hot exoplanet about 400 light years away from earth

 but what has the scientific community buzzing is the fact that this new planet has been captured in a direct image welcome to fact nominal and today we will be taking a closer look at this fascinating discovery [Music]

 an exoplanet is described as any planet that lies beyond the confines of our solar system

 exoplanet discovery is an extremely new branch of astronomy with the first exoplanets being discovered not too long ago in the 1990s and the numbers have gone up dramatically ever since in fact the numbers have actually doubled approximately every 27 months according to nasa

 it's fascinating that there is now an entire generation of people who don't even know what it's like to grow up believing that there are only nine planets in the solar system remember those days

 well the search for the worlds beyond earth or even planets that are comparable to it has been ongoing for years now and through the process scientists and astronomers have actually chanced upon some truly marvelous worlds [Music]

 with new planets being discovered so frequently it's important to note that discovering one is not as easy as it may seem

 in order to detect an exoplanet the first thing you would have to do is to actually point your telescope at a star then you would proceed to look for more fainter objects circling around the star this in itself would be extremely difficult as planets are just too faint to detect on their own in nasa's own words it's like trying to see a firefly flitting around a spotlight if it were that easy to spot an extrasolar planet we would have located millions of them by now so how was the first exoplanet ever discovered then one might ask well that all actually begins with observing the motion of a star in school we are taught that the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun which is only the partial truth the sun and planets actually revolve around the center of mass of the entire solar system itself taking our solar system as an example the sun would be the most massive component and so it's generally the closest to the center of mass but it does tend to shuffle around a bit the planets around a more distant star should cause the star to move as well this is exactly what the astronomers have used to find these planets using the doppler effect it was a breakthrough discovery made back in 1992 that really provided the rock solid evidence about these planets astronomers alexander wolzen and dale frail were the ones to announce the discovery of not one but two planets comparable and mass to planet earth using somewhat of a variation of the doppler effect

 what they discovered was not just objects circling a large bright star but a pulsar

 undoubtedly one of the most exotic things you could find in the universe these supernova remnants are so densely packed that any moment it could collapse into a black hole the objects witnessed here orbiting the pulsar are the first evidence of planets beyond our solar system

 some argue though that because it orbits a pulsar does it even qualify as a planet

 from then on people's understanding of what a planet is began to change flash forward to 1995. two astronomers at the geneva observatory in switzerland were working to improve the doppler effect

 and hunt for more exoplanets that could be out there

 michelle miora and dda kayla were monitoring the stars and came upon a sun-like star named 51 pegasi upon closer observation it seemed like 51 pegasi was moving 2n fro with an amplitude of 50 meters per second over a period of 4.2 days the signal implied that there had to be a planet with a minimum mass equal to that of either saturn or jupiter orbiting the star the only issue was that the planet was orbiting way too close to its central star about only 1 20th the distance from the earth to the sun there was initial skepticism and not many were welcoming to the idea that there could be other worlds beyond our solar system but what mayor and kaylo had actually ended up discovering is the planet that we know today as a hot jupiter

 that challenged the traditional planet formation theory altogether since then with the advance in technology we have now moved on to better and more advanced methods like direct imaging microlensing transits and radial velocity and have been able to debunk numerous myths about the planets that lie beyond as of today we have over 4 000 exoplanets that have been discovered and confirmed by scientists and it looks like there is no stopping the hunt for these alien worlds what once was an idea that was ridiculed and shunned by many is now a serious branch of astronomy that could very well change the way we understand planets and the world beyond our solar system the study of these exoplanets holds a very important key for us to understand how the formation of these worlds and ours came to be

 a question that scientists and astronomers are still debating to this very day

 direct evidence of extrasolar planets is very difficult to obtain since they are fainter and smaller than the stars that they orbit

 so instead scientists watch out for the wobble or faint gravitational effect that a planet would exert on its central star which causes the wavelength of the light to shift ever so slightly actually obtaining a picture of an exoplanet is nearly an impossible feat take pluto for example for years all we had of the planet was an image that made it look like a little blob on the edge of our solar system pluto orbits the sun about 40 times farther than the earth so you can just imagine what an exoplanet sitting millions of light years away would look like well not much at all recently university of hawaii astronomers were able to capture a direct image of one of the youngest planets ever discovered make way for the newest and youngest of all exoplanets 2m04 the exoplanet was discovered using the subaru telescope in hawaii and spotting the young planet was no easy feat it took nearly three years for the research team to track its star across the sky before they were finally able to confirm the baby exoplanet was moving right along with it

 for a quote baby exoplanet this celestial body is actually quite immense and nearly three times more massive than jupiter and also orbits notably far from its central star 2m0437 at approximately 100 astronomical units typically a planet being this far from its star would mean that it's far too cool to give off infrared radiation but this is where we see how young the planet really is at just a few million years old the young exoplanet is still glowing hot energized by the heat left over from its formation with temperatures around 1400 to 1500 kelvin making it glow faintly in infrared allowing scientists to spot it from a distance of 417 light years the planet along with a tow star are both comparatively much younger than the ones we find in our solar system needless to say the planet has created quite the excitement and no one can deny that it's just the beginning eric guidos lead author and professor at the university of hawaii said this serendipitous discovery adds to an elite list of planets that we can directly observe with our telescopes he also stated that by analyzing the light from this planet we will be able to say something about its composition and maybe where and how it was formed in a long vanished disk of gas and dust around its host star as of now astronomers have their eyes on the young planet and its star and believe this new system is an excellent candidate for some follow-up observations they are looking to nasa's james webb space telescope which would in all essence eliminate the shortcomings of the subaru telescope and help gather information about the gas giant's atmosphere the complete study outlining the planet's discovery has now been published in the journal of the notices of the royal astronomical society we still have so much more to discover about the planet but don't let its youth fool you it's already out here making history

 if anything this should be good news for space enthusiasts and amateur astronomers to grab your telescopes and start planet hunting you never know you might just be the one to spot the next big exoplanet

 so what do you think are you excited for the james webb space telescope will we be able to find more than just exoplanets tell us your thoughts don't forget to mash the like button and subscribe to our channel for more articles like this

 thanks for reading we'll see you next time