Astronomers discover strange new planet

[Celebration]

http://www.physorg.com/news77463300.html

U.S. astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known in the universe. Smithsonian scientists say the new planet was discovered using a network of small automated telescopes known as HATl. The planet -- designated HAT-P-1 -- orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta.

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With a radius about 1.38 times that of Jupiter, HAT-P-1 is the largest known planet. But, in spite of its huge size, its mass is only half that of Jupiter.

"This planet is about one-quarter the density of water," Bakos said. "In other words, it's lighter than a giant ball of cork! Just like Saturn, it would float in a bathtub if you could find a tub big enough to hold it."

Astronomer Robert Boyes, co-discoverer of the planet, said, "This new discovery suggests something could be missing in our theories of how planets form."

[SteppingRazor]

1. It's times like this you wish we had warp drive...

so we could fly out there and answer the question, "What the hell is that thing?!"

[Hav]

2. .

Exactly. It's too bad that we won't live long enough to find out the answers to all these questions out there.

[SteppingRazor]

3. I doubt our grandkids' grandkids' grandkids' (etc., etc.)...

would live long enough to see something like a ship out of Star Trek. We'll hit huge setbacks to technological advancement (nuclear war, peak oil, an astroid hit, the slow build of human-caused environmental damage, etc.) long before we ever manage to come up with something so outlandish.

[Bill McBlueState]

4. link to the journal article

Here's the preprint of their article: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0609369

The new planet was discovered by transit photometry, meaning astronomers observed small dips in the brightness of its parent star in order to infer its existence. This is different from the way most planets are found. The more common method involves noting minute changes in the velocity of the parent star as the planet tugs it back and forth. The advantage to transit photometry is that it gives you an unambiguous determination of the planet's mass and radius. The more common radial velocity method gives you only a lower limit to the mass.

So the claim "largest known planet" is actually a little misleading. Of the dozen or so planets discovered by transit photometry, this one has the largest radius. But some of the planets discovered with the other method likely have larger radii; we just don't know them yet.