Written content © 2008 Jack Oughton
Fomalhaut B In Focus: Meet the first planet to be visibly imaged outside our solar system
Image 1: A direct visible light observation of Fomalhaut B Fomalhaut Facts • • • • • • •
Planet Size: Estimated no more than three times Jupiter's mass Planet Location: Orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish). Orbital Period: 872 years. Orbital Distance: 17 billion kilometres from the star, roughly 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from the Sun. Planet Structure: Fomalhaut b is thought to possess a circumplanetary disc, like the rings around Jupiter. Fomalhaut b’s disk is at a distance similar to the orbital radius of Jupiter's satellites. Moons could be forming around the planet. Fomalhaut b is believed to be the coolest, lowest-mass object ever observed outside our solar system. The star, Fomalhaut is expected to burn out in only one billion years, 1/10th the lifespan of our Sun. This will probably not leave enough time for advanced life to evolve on any habitable worlds the star might possess. Discovery Timeline
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Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since the discovery of an excess of dust around the system in the 1980s
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Written content © 2008 Jack Oughton
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In 2004, the first-ever visible light image of a large dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut was taken. It showed that this belt is actually a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 34.5 billion kilometres across with a sharp inner edge. This sharp inner edge suggested the presence of young planets which gather up dust and matter as they orbit - and prompted the team to begin looking for the suspected planet in 2005. In 2008 the first direct light images of Fomalhaut b are taken Future observations will image the planet in infared and look for evidence of water vapour clouds in the atmosphere. This give us our first chance to study a the planetary equivilant of a newborn, only 100 million years old. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to be launched in 2013, will be turning its infared eye on Fomalhaut. It will have stronger optical capabilities than we currently have today, and will search for other planets in the system. It will also look at the region interior to the dust ring for other things such as an inner asteroid belt. Significance of discovery
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The search for exoplanets has up to now depended on detecting either the wobble they induce in their parent star or, if their orbits are side-on to telescopes, watching them dim the star's light as they pass in front of it. We have never had a ‘naked eye’ image before. The inner edge of our Solar System's Kuiper Belt is similarly shaped by the gravitational influence of Neptune, researchers believe Fomalhaut could harbour more planets. Current methods to find exoplanets can only detect Jupiter-sized objects and larger; Dr. Christian Marois, the leader of a team that recorded three planets circling a star known as HR 8799 believes that there could be more undiscovered planets in orbit around Fomalhaut, too small for us to detect: "Other gas giants or even rocky planets could reside there." The Fomalhaut system is only 200 million years old, ours is thought to be over 5 billion years old: we are watching a new system form. New technological advancements in the coming decades may allow us to study a planetary system much like our own, in a younger stage of development, and allow us to compare how varying factors such as the size of the star, and the position and number of the planets affect the system as a whole.
References: HEIC0821 News Release, Hubble/ESA, -
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/doc/heic0821.doc Exoplanets finally come into view, BBC News -‐ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7725584.stm-‐ Notes to editor: I am happy to include more pictures , quotes, information and a visual timeline, depending on the amount of space for segment. I’d also be happy to interview some of the researchers involved. Some text would be rewritten but this is the structure i am prepared to work with.
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Written content © 2008 Jack Oughton I am of course open to revisions and suggestions. I also use publisher and would therefore like to create a visual design for the piece that looks like a moderately futuristic fact file, however I am not aware of your policy on this, as it may conflict with your magazine’s visual design
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