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Astronomers studying exoplanets have found one with a very odd system. It orbits two stars! There have been planets discovered that orbit one of two binary stars, or that orbit a star and a burned-out star, but this one actually orbits around two real stars. The planet is named Kepler-16, meaning it was discovered by data gathered from the orbiting Kepler observatory. However, astronomers have already nicknamed it Tattooine, after the double-sun planet where Luke Skywalker grew up.
And while there are two stars involved in heating the planet, their light is pretty feeble. Even at its distance of a little over 100 million kilometers (65 million miles) from the pair — roughly the same distance at which Venus orbits the Sun — Kepler-16b is cold: the temperature at its cloud tops (assuming it’s a gas giant like Saturn) would be at best -70°C (-100°F).
So any visions you have of Luke Skywalker standing in the desert with his leg resting on a rock while he wistfully watches the two suns set in the west may have to wait. Even if the planet has a big moon (which these observations cannot yet detect) conditions there would be a bit chillier than on Tatooine. More like Hoth.
Read more about it, including more Star Wars puns, at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link
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No, that's not a new planet discovered by NASA. Rather, it's part of Devour, a series of photographs featuring the bottoms of frying pans by Norwegian photographer Christopher Jonassen.
Link - via The Fox is Black
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by Meg Muckenhoupt, Lexington, Massachusetts, USA
Illustrations by Gavin Schnitzler, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
On a hot night in August, while strolling in Prague,
Horton the elephant peered through the fog
With his portable telescope tied on a string
He looked at the heavens and spotted… a thing!
So Horton stopped walking and stared at the spot.
“That’s funny,” thought Horton, “It was there, now it’s not.”
Then he saw it again! Just a faint bit of fuzz
He certainly thought it wasn’t there—but it was!
“I’ll name it!” said Horton, “But what is it? Where?”
He looked and he looked. He could see nothing there
But small speck of ice floating far past the air.
“I say!” murmured Horton. “Stuff my trunk in a sock!
I’ve spotted a terribly far-away rock!
So you know what I think? I think that there must
Be a splendid new name for this lump of star-dust.
Even though it is quite a diminutive size,
Too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes…
But it looks very spherical, round at the girth,
Just like the planets Mars, Venus, and Earth
I’ll just have to name it. Because, after all,
A planet’s a planet no matter how small.”
“Humpf!” humphed a voice. ‘Twas a sour old sloth
Who cleared his thick head with a very slow cough.
“Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin!
A planet that small? There never has been!”
The planets and that thing are just not the same!
They don’t occupy the same orbital plane!
That thing’s not a planet—not even a dwarf.
It’s an asteroid merely, for all that that’s worth.”
She ended the sentence at twenty past one,
Exactly five hours since she had begun.
But Horton was patient, and waited to say
Why he thought this very new planet should stay.
more …
Our pal Geekosystem has gone into a lot of trouble ranking the 10 coolest planets of the Sci-Fi world. Listed at number 4 is the Mogo, a sentient planet:
We have Alan Moore to thank for Mogo, the sentient planet and member of the Green Lantern Corp. Frequently referred to as "he" despite lacking a gender, Mogo is one of the most solitary of the Lanterns, since, should he try to visit another planet, the force of his gravity might tear it apart. Mogo has complete control over his surface and weather patterns, which he uses to create the illusion of the Green Lantern emblem in green foliage, and he gladly serves as a training and recreation planet for the Lantern Corp. He also guides the trajectory of owner-less Lantern rings to new recruits. Over the span of DC continuity he has been host to a few transient races, though has never produced sentient life of his own.
Mogo doesn’t like it when you compare him to a billiard ball.
Here’s the list. See if you agree with the top pick: Link
Astronomers are identifying more and more exoplanets, planets that exist in other star systems besides ours. Of the hundreds of exoplanets we know of, the one that most resembles earth is called GJ 1214b. It can be studied because it is only 42 light years away.
Based on its radius and mass — about 2.7 and 6.6 times that of Earth’s — Charbonneau and the other astronomers have calculated GJ 1214b’s density. It appears to be composed of extraordinarily deep oceans, surrounding a rocky core.
The planet’s atmosphere and precise composition remain a mystery, but it’s likely composed of many of the same elements found elsewhere at sites of planetary formation, in swirling disks of dust and gas that have yet to accrete: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, magnesium, oxygen, carbon.
That list of ingredients raises at least the possibility of life. With an estimated temperature of 370 degrees Fahrenheit, GJ 1214b is an unlikely incubator (Earth’s toughest extremophile, a microbe that lives in deep-sea volcanic vents, maxes out at 284 degrees) but it’s not impossible.
The folks at Wired believe that GJ 1214b deserves a better name, and is taking suggestions and votes for a new name. Of course, Stephen Colbert is high on the list. I voted for Sagan. Link to story. Link to poll. -via Metafilter
NASA’s Spitzer Telescope spent five months observing LRLL 31, a young star with a ring of materials orbiting it. Astronomers believe that it is in an early stage of planetary formation and that a sizeable lump in the ring system may be a protoplanet:
One theory of planet formation suggests that planets start out as dusty grains swirling around a star in a disk. They slowly bulk up in size, collecting more and more mass like sticky snow. As the planets get bigger and bigger, they carve out gaps in the dust, until a so-called transitional disk takes shape with a large doughnut-like hole at its center. Over time, this disk fades and a new type of disk emerges, made up of debris from collisions between planets, asteroids and comets. Ultimately, a more settled, mature solar system like our own forms.[...]
Muzerolle and his team say that a companion to the star, circling in a gap in the system’s disk, could explain the data. “A companion in the gap of an almost edge-on disk would periodically change the height of the inner disk rim as it circles around the star: a higher rim would emit more light at shorter wavelengths because it is larger and hot, but at the same time, the high rim would shadow the cool material of the outer disk, causing a decrease in the longer-wavelength light. A low rim would do the opposite. This is exactly what we observe in our data,” said Elise Furlan, a co-author from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, according to new findings from NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity.
The new findings confirm suspicions that water once shaped the Martian landscape on a regional scale instead of forming isolated oases, said rover project leader Steven Squyres of Cornell University in New York State.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by sunnyspeaks.
Astronomers have recently discovered two planets that may point in the right direction towards finding life hospitable planets in our universe.
In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.
“The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the ‘habitable zone,’” said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.
An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet “extraordinary.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
