Hello Space Fans and welcome to another edition of Space Fan News.
Well, we can all relax now, it's OK for the Earth to end today, because earlier this week
astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire have found us another one.
Whew, just in time.
Using more than 6,000 observations from telescopes in Chile, Australia, and Hawaii, of the rather
famous star known as Tau Ceti, astronomers have found what they believe to be signatures
from the stars wobble that up to five planets may be in orbit around it.
Tau Ceti is kinda famous because it was the first star Frank Drake - searching for extraterrestrial
signals - made it his first target for his radio telescopes back in 1960.
Why?
Well, it's only 12 light years away (only three times farther than the closest star)
and it is a bright G-type yellow main-sequence star just like the sun.
Only one in 25 stars are like the Sun, so looking at one so close to us was very promising.
While Dr. Drake didn't find any telltale signals around Tau Ceti, that hasn't stopped people
from pretending it didn't harbor life, or even a civilization.
It has been the home base of many alien species and civilizations in science fiction stories
including Star Trek and the movie Barbarella starring Jane Fonda.
In real life, Tau Ceti is about 45% as bright as our Sun and about twice as old, which means
there has been plenty of time to planets to form.
Tau Ceti is also a single star, not part of a binary, making even more like ours.
The discovery announced this week is based on spectra taken as part of the Anglo-Australian
Planet Search with the UCLES spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, HIRES on
the Keck Telescope, and a reanalysis of spectra taken with the HARPS spectrograph made available
through the European Southern Observatory public archive.
Using the radial velocity method, the wobble of Tau Ceti seems to suggest that there are
five planets in orbit.
All five are very close to the star, within the orbit of Mars in our solar system.
Tau Ceti's three innermost planets—designated b, c, and d—are probably too hot to support
life, being so close to the star that they require only 14, 35, and 94 days respectively
to complete an orbit.
The farthest of the three, d, is about as close to Tau Ceti as Mercury is to the sun.
But it's the fourth planet—planet e—that they say might be the life-bearing world,
even though it's about four times as massive as Earth.
If you lived there, you'd see a yellow sun in the sky, but your year would last just
168 days.
That's because Tau Ceti e lies somewhat closer to its star than Venus does to the sun and
thus revolves faster than Earth.
The fifth and outermost planet, designated Tau Ceti f, completes an orbit every 640 days
and is slightly closer to its star than Mars is to the sun.
Still, before you go looking for Jane Fonda on these planets, these observations are far
from complete.
They only suggest the possibility that planets are there, they still need to be confirmed.
Professor Sara Seager from MIT who was not part of the team, and someone you've heard
from twice now in our space fan hangouts says, "They're really digging deep into the noise
here.
The [astronomical] community is going to find it hard to accept planet discoveries from
signals so deeply embedded in noise."
So what we need now are more eyeballs, or rather CCD's, on this star to confirm whether
these planets exist so that we can all start sending messages to Barbarella.
Trivia question for you Star Trek Fans: What awesome Star Trek Movie was Tau Ceti mentioned?
Hint: it was not one of the Next Generation ones.
Next, I would be remiss if I didn't mention something about the world ending today.
The thing is I'm sick of hearing about it so all I'm gonna say is.
It isn't.
Finally, on a more serious note on my last SFN for the year, I wanted to take a moment
to remember Sir Patrick Moore, who died on December 9th.
For those who don't know, Patrick Moore was the Carl Sagan of Britain, only he was bigger
and more well known.
I know!
Since 1957 he hosted a show called The Sky at Night and he had all sorts of amazing guests
on it, including Carl Sagan.
The Sky at Night holds the record for the longest running show with the same presenter
in history.
705 episodes were filmed over 55 years, with the last one airing in January next year (obviously
filmed before his death).
I'm sure the Brits have lots of ways to remember him, but I was fortunate enough to meet him
at a conference in 1982 in Seattle at a meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
He as larger than life and prior to that day, I didn't know who he was.
I knew he was important because he acted like he was, but he was also very kind.
For reasons I don't remember, we ended up spending an entire day together looking at
the sights of Seattle and as I remember it, he showed me around as if he lived there all
his life.
We laughed a lot and I asked him a billion questions about astronomy, black holes, pulsars,
galaxies, all of which he was happy to discuss, and he never made me feel stupid.
I was 20 years old then, just starting out and very frustrated about my math blocks.
His advice to me was, he knew plenty of astronomers who couldn't add or subtract to save their
lives when they started, but as with anything, the brain needs practice.
The more math you do, the more neurons you connect that can do it and suddenly you find
yourself doing math.
That's exactly how it worked out for me.
I wrote this story up long ago on my website of how I overcame my math blocks, and I owe
a lot of my success to that day in Seattle.
So thank you Sir Patrick for all you've given us.
The inhabitants of this planet will sorely miss you.
Well, that's it for this week Space Fans, look for the next SFN next year where I'll
be at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach.
Oh, one more thing.
For those of you with iPads, the Space Telescope Science Institute (where I work) has just
published two iBooks and are now available for free in the iTunes store.
There is one on the Hubble Space Telescope and another on the James Webb Space Telescope.
These are awesome and you need to download them, I think these are very well done.
The Hubble one describes how it works and gives a history of what it has been through
since in orbit.
It also highlights some of the great discoveries it has made over the years.
The JWST one also shows how it works and many of the instruments it will have on board,including
descriptions of the sun shield and where the telescope will be in orbit; but it also gives
us a glimpse of some of the amazing science we will be able to do with it that we can't
currently do with Hubble.
So please check em out when you get a chance, just in time for the holidays!
I put a link to more info down in the description box.
Thank you for watching and, as always, Keep Looking Up!