New technology promises authentic images of the exoplanets in our neighbouring star system Alpha Centauri. The dress rehearsal immediately delivered something that makes astronomers dream of a great discovery.
We can all observe our solar system’s planets and dwarf planets with telescopes: Even the distant Pluto appears as a blurred sphere on the Hubble space telescope’s images.
But can today’s instruments also take pictures of planets orbiting other stars? We now know more than 4000 such exoplanets. But in most cases, they are far too far away to be seen next to their much brighter star. So far, it has only been achievable to infer their existence indirectly, for example, when the planets darken their lead a little or shake it minimally as they pass by.
Scientific American
Is It a Planet? Astronomers Spy Promising Potential World around Alpha Centauri
The candidate could be a “warm Neptune” or a mirage. Either way, it signals the dawn of a revolution in astronomy
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Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighboring star system, rises above a unit of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO
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For the first time ever, astronomers may have glimpsed light from a world in a life-friendly orbit around another star.
The planet candidate remains unverified and formally unnamed, little more than a small clump of pixels on a computer screen, a potential signal surfacing from a sea of background noise. If proved genuine, the newly reported find would in most respects not be particularly remarkable: a “warm Neptune” estimated to be five to seven times larger than Earth, the sort of world that galactic census-takers such as NASA’s Kepler
Since 1995 when exoplanet explorers from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz –who were recently awarded half of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of a planet orbiting a sunlike star named 51 Pegasi– thousands of extrasolar planets have been found, including potentially Earth-like worlds, along with bizarre objects that bear no resemblance to any of the planets in our solar system.
Twenty-Six Years Later…
Twenty-six years later, it is now possible to capture images of planets that could potentially sustain life around nearby stars using a newly developed system for mid-infrared exoplanet imaging. In tandem with a very long observation time, a new study’s authors say they can now use ground-based telescopes to directly capture images of planets about three times the size of Earth within the habitable zones of nearby stars.
Astronomers hopes raised by glimpse of possible new planet Ian Sample Science editor
Astronomers have glimpsed what may be a previously unknown planet circling one of the closest stars to Earth.
Researchers spotted the bright dot near Alpha Centauri A, one of a pair of stars that swing around each other so tightly they appear as one in the southern constellation of Centaurus. The stars form what is called a binary system 4.37 light years away, a mere stone’s throw in cosmic terms.
So tentative is the sighting that scientists are referring to it only as a “planet candidate”, aware that the bright speck in the darkness of space may be evidence of alien asteroids, streaks of dust, or more prosaically, an unforeseen glitch in their equipment.