http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...311357,00.htmlAstronomers from the UK using a 'revolutionary' new camera have discovered 10 new planets.
10 new planets have been found
They are in orbit around other stars, commonly known as extrasolar planets, and were detected by high-tech 'WASP' cameras located in the Canary Islands and South Africa.
The discovery has been hailed a "triumph" for European astronomy.
The news was formally announced by the Royal Astronomical Society at their National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.
The stunning findings are the latest to come from the successful Wide Area Search for Planets project (SuperWASP), which was launched in 2004.
Scientists at Queen's University in Belfast developed the WASP camera, which has revolutionised astronomy and increased the frequency with which planets are discovered.
The SuperWASP system uses two sets of cameras to survey a large portion of the sky.
The cameras look for and record transits - where a planet passes directly in front of a star, blocking its light and making it appear fainter.
Astronomers then check the cameras for transits and can deduce the size and mass of each new planet.
One of the team's WASP cameras
Prior to the WASPs, scientists had to study each star for several months, which inevitably led to fewer discoveries.
Most of the latest discoveries were made by a team led by Dr Don Pollacco of the Astrophysics Research Centre in the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen's.
Dr Pollacco said: "SuperWASP is now a planet-finding production line and will revolutionise the detection of large planets and our understanding of how they were formed.
"It's a great triumph for European astronomers."
A total of 45 planets have now been discovered using the transit system - and SuperWASP cameras have found 15 of them.
One of the newly-discovered planets is so close to its star that its surface temperature is believed to reach an astonishing 2,300 degrees celsius.
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Out Of This World: 10 New Planets Found
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Sounds good but i doubt its much to get excited about.
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Sounds interesting to me.
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10 new planets. Cool.
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I don't really see how this is a breakthrough anyway. If we eventually want to hop planets once we cannot use any in our solar system the closest star other than the sun is 4.2 light years away. A light year is how far light travels in one year. one light year is about 5,865,696,000,000 miles per year conventionally. So that times 4.2 is: 24635923200000 miles conventionally. So any hope of getting anywhere else is more or less impossible unless we travel at the speed of light.
Last edited by -Xiangu-; 02-04-2008 at 03:30 PM.
Joined Habbox for the first time on the 29-10-2005 // Joined Habbox for the second time on the 08-10-2006 // Joined Habbox for the third time on the 30-09-2007 // Became a Habbox Writer on the 26-11-2007 // Became a Senior Habbox Writer on the 07-02-2008 // Left Habbox 01-07-2008 // Came back to habbox on 23-08-2008 // Became a Writer again on the 27-08-2008 // Became a Trialist Content Designer on the 22-09-08 // Left Habbox on the 30-09-08
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yeah, imagine that though, living on another planet
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sounds cool, i wonder if a human could live on there
Now im at the top aint know where to go now, instead of me she gon go down
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There are probably alot of planets humans could live but the fact is getting out of our solar system is near enough impossible (With the technology we have)
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02-04-2008, 04:58 PM #9DarkSquiffy Guest
Its weird when you think about it. There could be billions of planets out there but people say ours is the only one with life on it? I doubt it D:
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I agree.
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