The European Southern Observatory's HARPS spectrograph has detected visible light from the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b:
Astronomers using the HARPS planet-hunting machine at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile have made the first-ever direct detection of the spectrum of visible light reflected off an exoplanet. These observations also revealed new properties of this famous object, the first exoplanet ever discovered around a normal star: 51 Pegasi b. The result promises an exciting future for this technique, particularly with the advent of next generation instruments, such as ESPRESSO, on the VLT, and future telescopes, such as the E-ELT.
The exoplanet 51 Pegasi b lies some 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was discovered in 1995 and will forever be remembered as the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like the Sun. It is also regarded as the archetypal hot Jupiter—a class of planets now known to be relatively commonplace, which are similar in size and mass to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their parent stars.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 23 2015, @02:55AM
This summer, our probe to Pluto will give us a much closer look than is possible from our distance of mere light hours. We had to send a probe for a good look, it can't be done with our current telescope technology. Given that, I would never have thought it possible to see a planet from 50 light years away.
There has to be some limit on how well a planet can be resolved over such distances. What is that limit? I can imagine that clever processing of the changing color of a very few pixels, maybe just a single pixel, can, over time and repeated viewings, build up some details of a planetary surface. I'm actually a little surprised more effort has not been put into developing such methods for Pluto. I guess they don't want Hubble tied up staring at Pluto for the weeks necessary to provide enough data to apply them, especially not with a probe on the way. Will techniques ever be good enough for aliens to map Earth's continents from 100 light years away?
We sure cannot send a probe to 51 Pegasi! We may never be able to do that. Almost the first change necessary to conceive such a mission that has any chance at all of success, requires that we change ourselves to think much more long term, work on stabilizing civilization. We would need a probe that can last thousands of years, and we'd have to accelerate it to far faster speeds. At the speeds the Voyager probes are traveling, it'd take 70,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri at only 4 light years away.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday April 23 2015, @03:23AM
Well, according to TFA, its a big planet much closer to its sun:
It is also regarded as the archetypal hot Jupiter — a class of planets now known to be relatively commonplace, which are similar in size and mass to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their parent stars.
So it might just be a spec of light, maybe only a few pixels.
Also, It would seem to me that we are probably getting close to the point of being able send a prob 51 light years away. We wouldn't be able to control it so it would have to be pretty autonomous, and we would probably need ion engines or some such, nuclear power sufficient for two or three hundred years, massive shielding, huge antennas, and hope we still have the technology to receive its signal in the distant future.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday April 23 2015, @08:25AM
hope we
still havecan invent the technology to receive its signal in the distant future.FTFFG (For Future Generations)
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday April 23 2015, @08:34AM
Blimey, it looks just like Jupiter, but without the big red spot!
You can even clearly see the shadow line drawn on its surface by 51 Pegasi, and some of the cloud bands!
... no, wait, that's the "artist's impression", isn't it? There's no crude graph made with GNUplot of the intensities of its spectral lines.. crap..
I find it a bit disappointing that the PR people of ESO feel the need to slap an "artist's impression of a gas giant" on their webpage in order to share their awe with us.
Grmbl.