400 years from seeing our own solar system’s planets to seeing planets around other stars

1. Alien Worlds Discovered! 400 years from seeing our own solar system’s planets to seeing planets around other stars

3. Lets go back 400 years • The spectacle maker’s shop Florentine rivet bone or ivory spectacle frame late 15th c. http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it

4. Galileo’s telescopes • Very crude instrument by today’s standards. • Magnified between 8x to 30x • He made several that he gave to his sponsors http://galileo.rice.edu/index.html

5. Replica http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it

6. Comparisons with a reproduction of his telescope First quarter moon One of Galileo’s drawings What he probably saw. His telescope only would let him see small portions at a time. http://www.pacifier.com/~tpope/index.htm

7. Galileo’s key observations • Craters on the moon • Moons of Jupiter • Phases of Venus • Sunspots • Milky Way made up of stars http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/galileo.html http://www.pacifier.com/~tpope/index.htm

8. Star Party in 1609 "Vies des Savants Illustres" by Louis Figuier (Paris, 1870)

9. Let’s jump back just 40 years… • Amateur telescopes and CCD cameras • Can now take better pictures than professional observatories did • Still contribute large amounts of supplemental data to ongoing professional research

10. Then & now 1967 “best” professional picture (Kitt Peak) ATMoB/NSAAC member John Boudreau, taken in 2006 http://www.spacescenes.com/ The Explosion of Science, Meredeth Press

13. Exoplanets • First one (confirmed) discovered in1992 • Current confirmed count is 228 • November’s announcement not the first ones to be photographed • Just the least controversial http://exoplanets.org/

14. Potential exoplanets from 2004 & 2005 http://www.eso.org/

15. To better understand these newest pictures we need to look at how planets may be formed • …and to understand that we really have to look at how stars form as well

16. Simulation of the formation of a cluster of new stars clickme

17. Orion Nebula • Referred to as a “Stellar Nursery” • Large (25 light years in size) cloud of dust and gas about 1270 light years away • About 700 stars being formed • Ages between 10,000 and 100,000 years

18. Flying to the Orion Nebula

20. New stars in the Orion nebula

21. Easier to see the stars in infrared instead of visible light

22. And compare to our simulation again

23. Another look at the formation process

24. Accretion…or not!

25. If our theories about planet formation are right we expect to see new stars ringed with dust • We see just that looking at Fomalhaut • About 25 light years from Earth • About twice the mass of our Sun • 100 to 300 million years old • A coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope was used to block the star’s light in this picture so we can see the disc of material around it • Planets are somewhere in size between Neptune and 3 times the size of Jupiter

27. At the same time that Fomalhaut’s planet was announced… • A different set of scientists released this picture of a star called HR 8799 (in the constellation Pegasus) • Used a different technique call Adaptive Optics to remove the star’s light • 129 light years away • About 1.5 times the size of our sun • 3 planets about 7 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter • The star is brighter, so even though they are farther from the star than our own Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, temperatures on the planets would be similar

28. http://www.keckobservatory.org/article.php?id=231

29. The End

30. Credits • Pictures • New stars: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-22/ssc2005-22b.shtml • Hubble Telescope • http://www.solarviews.com/ • Sound effects: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/i • Music: • Joe Satriani: Hill of the Skull • Ozric Tentacles: Dance of the Loomi, There’s a Planet Here • Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime • B52s: Planet Claire, There’s a Moon in the Sky Called the Moon • Andras Schiff/Mozart: Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman • Zero 7: Polaris • Smashmouth: Who’s There • Animations: • NASA • Hubble Telescope • Solar system formation http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/