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Search for the water of life -- UCL astronomers find water on extra-solar planet
July 12, 2007Researchers at UCL (University College London) are part of an international team which has discovered water on an extra-solar planet for the first time. Findings will be published in this week's Nature (July 12).
'Extra-solar' planets are those outside our Solar System and more than 200 have been discovered orbiting stars close to our own Sun. The planet with water in its atmosphere is known as HD 189733b, and orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula the Fox, which is 64 light years from the Sun. HD 189733b is known as a "transiting planet" because it passes directly in front of its star, as viewed from the Earth.
The researchers, led by Dr Giovanna Tinetti of the European Space Agency and UCL's Department of Physics & Astronomy, found that as HD 189733b passes in front of its 'sun', it absorbs starlight in a way that can only be explained by the presence of water vapour in its atmosphere. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to confirm that water is present on an extra-solar planet.
Dr Tinetti, who has recently taken up a prestigious Aurora Fellowship at UCL, said: "Although HD 189733b is far from being habitable, and actually provides a rather hostile environment, our discovery shows that water might be more common out there than previously thought, and our method can be used in the future to study more 'life-friendly' environments."
The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Earth-orbiting telescope, taking measurements at a number of key wavelengths in the infrared region of the spectrum that pick out the crucial signature of water. The water detection relied not only on Dr Tinetti's painstaking analysis, but also on the calculation of highly accurate water absorption parameters by Dr Bob Barber and Professor Jonathan Tennyson, both of UCL's Department of Physics & Astronomy.
Dr Barber said: "The absorption parameters were calculated from our Barber-Tennyson list of water vapour spectral lines. This includes over 500 million individual absorption features, each like fingerprints, giving us vital clues to the amount of water present and the temperature of the atmosphere."
Professor Tennyson, who heads UCL's Physics & Astronomy Department, explained: "Parts of the atmosphere of HD 189733b are very hot - around 2,000 degrees. You need the millions of lines we calculated to simulate this, putting in absorption accurately where it should be and - just as accurately - giving gaps for the light to get through the atmosphere, where it can."
HD 189733 is a star very much like our own Sun, although a little cooler. Its planet is not like Earth, however. HD 189733b is a gas giant planet, about 15 per cent bigger than Jupiter. However, while Jupiter is over five times as far away from the Sun as our Earth is, HD 189733b is more than 30 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun - explaining why it's so hot.
Dr Tinetti added: "The 'holy grail' for today's planet hunters is to find an Earth-like planet that also has water in its atmosphere. When it happens, that discovery will provide real evidence that planets outside our Solar System might harbour life. Finding the existence of water on an extra-solar gas giant is a vital milestone along that road of discovery."
University College London
Dr Tinetti, who has recently taken up a prestigious Aurora Fellowship at UCL, said: "Although HD 189733b is far from being habitable, and actually provides a rather hostile environment, our discovery shows that water might be more common out there than previously thought, and our method can be used in the future to study more 'life-friendly' environments."
The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Earth-orbiting telescope, taking measurements at a number of key wavelengths in the infrared region of the spectrum that pick out the crucial signature of water. The water detection relied not only on Dr Tinetti's painstaking analysis, but also on the calculation of highly accurate water absorption parameters by Dr Bob Barber and Professor Jonathan Tennyson, both of UCL's Department of Physics & Astronomy.
Dr Barber said: "The absorption parameters were calculated from our Barber-Tennyson list of water vapour spectral lines. This includes over 500 million individual absorption features, each like fingerprints, giving us vital clues to the amount of water present and the temperature of the atmosphere."
Professor Tennyson, who heads UCL's Physics & Astronomy Department, explained: "Parts of the atmosphere of HD 189733b are very hot - around 2,000 degrees. You need the millions of lines we calculated to simulate this, putting in absorption accurately where it should be and - just as accurately - giving gaps for the light to get through the atmosphere, where it can."
HD 189733 is a star very much like our own Sun, although a little cooler. Its planet is not like Earth, however. HD 189733b is a gas giant planet, about 15 per cent bigger than Jupiter. However, while Jupiter is over five times as far away from the Sun as our Earth is, HD 189733b is more than 30 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun - explaining why it's so hot.
Dr Tinetti added: "The 'holy grail' for today's planet hunters is to find an Earth-like planet that also has water in its atmosphere. When it happens, that discovery will provide real evidence that planets outside our Solar System might harbour life. Finding the existence of water on an extra-solar gas giant is a vital milestone along that road of discovery."
University College London
Astonomers find tiny planet orbiting tiny star
An international team of astronomers led by David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame has discovered an extra-solar planet of about three Earth masses orbiting a star with a mass so low that its core may not be large enough to maintain nuclear reactions. The result was presented Monday (June 2) at the American Astronomical Society annual meeting in St. Louis.
Dartmouth researchers part of the team to discover similar planetary system to our solar system
Two Dartmouth researchers are part of the team that has discovered a planetary system where the two largest planets are very similar to Jupiter and Saturn, in terms of mass and distance from their host star.
Astronomers discover distant, icy Earth-like planet
An international team of astrophysicists has discovered a new planet five times the size of Earth, the smallest extrasolar planet revealed to date outside of our solar system.
It's far, it's small, it's cool: It's an icy exoplanet!
Using a network of telescopes scattered across the globe, including the Danish 1.54m telescope at ESO La Silla (Chile), astronomers discovered a new extrasolar planet significantly more Earth-like than any other planet found so far.
Earth light: Terrestrial vegetation detected in the spectrum of the earthshine
A team including Pierre Riaud and Jean Schneider of the Observatoire de Paris and Luc Arnold, Sophie Gillet and Olivier Lardie're of the Observatoire de Haute Provence detected for the first time the color characteristic of the terrestrial vegetation in the "Earthshine", i.e. the dark part of the Moon only hit by the Earth light. To observe the light of the Earth by reflexion on the Moon enables to characterize the aspect of our planet as seen by a remote observer. It prepares the detection of extra-solar planets similar to the Earth. The observations were made from April 2001 (and some are still being done) at the 80 cm telescope of the OHP. At the time of the observations reported here (la
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