|
|
|---|
Friday, September 17, 2010
Herscel takes first image
Herschel takes its first image of the Whirlpool galaxy, M51.
Herschel launched just one month ago and is the largest infrared space telescope ever flown.
Big planet, small star
One of the smallest stars in the Galaxy has been found to have a planet orbiting it that is six times more massive than Jupiter. This gas giant is as far from its star as Mercury is from our Sun, but because the star is so small, it is like a scaled down version of our own Solar System, with the planet where Jupiter would be. This raises the possibility that there could be even more planets that are rocky like Earth even closer to the star.
The star in question is a red dwarf called VB 10. For a time it was one of the smallest stars known to exist. Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the Galaxy, and are the coolest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)