Hubble’s Planet

Everybody has no doubt heard about what I call the “Hubble Planet”, it’s the planet (Formalhaut b) Hubble imaged around Formalhaut.

The news was so pervasive I didn’t post anything, but most of the pictures I saw show the wide version which doesn’t really show the planet. So I decided to show the portion of the wide version that contains the planet.

The two bright dots shows the planet and its movement over 21 months.

The original image was taken back in 2004 and the follow up was taken in 2006. The two bright dots in the image above show the planet in both positions so we can see that it has indeed moved.

By seeing how far the planet moved in the specific amount of time allows for an orbit to be calculated using Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. In this case the orbital period is 872 years, and sure this is to a first approximation, and the estimate will be refined as more data becomes available.

Click here for the full press release from Hubblesite an more images.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

You can read the entire story here