The Frontier

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The Frontier Cutting Edge images
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The Frontier Cutting Edge images
Hubble Space Telescope Captures First Direct
Image of a Star This is the first direct image
of a star other than the Sun. Called Alpha
Orionis, or Betelgeuse, the star is a red super
giant, a Sun-like star nearing the end of its
life. The Hubble picture reveals a huge
ultraviolet atmosphere with a mysterious hot spot
on the stellar behemoth's surface. The enormous
bright spot, more than 10 times the diameter of
Earth, is at least 2,000 degrees Kelvin hotter
than the star's surface
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The Frontier Cutting Edge images
The Spitzer Space Telescope has pierced thick
cosmic dust to reveal this embedded protostar, or
embryonic star, in HH46-IR
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The Frontier Cutting Edge images
This Spitzer Space Telescope image shows, in its
entirety, a disc of planet-forming debris
encircling a nearby star called Fomalhaut.
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The Frontier Cutting Edge images
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Signs of water found on distant planets Water has
been detected in region around Upsilon
Andromedae Tantalising signs of water have been
found in the atmospheres of planets orbiting
distant stars. If the discovery is confirmed, it
will fuel speculation that the Galaxy is teeming
with life. "This would be a historic discovery -
the first detection of a prebiotic molecule in an
extrasolar planet," says Cristiano Cosmovici of
the Institute for Cosmic and Planetary Sciences
in Rome, whose team made the discovery. Cosmovici
has looked for water near 17 stars, all of which
are thought to have planetary systems or cometary
clouds. His team used the 32-metre Medicina radio
telescope near Bologna to look for water "maser"
emissions. These are telltale microwaves that
might come from water in a planet's atmosphere
when it is bathed in the infrared light of its
star. Three of the planetary systems are
producing these emissions, Cosmovici told the
Second European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology in
Austria this week. "This result is astonishing if
it's true," says Geoff Marcy, a leading planet
hunter from the University of California at
Berkeley.
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One of the planetary systems orbits the star
Upsilon Andromedae, about 50 light years away.
There are three planets in this system, with
minimum masses of about 0.7, 2.1 and 4.6 times
the mass of Jupiter. They are all gas giants like
Jupiter, although it is possible that the system
could also contain undetected rocky planets like
Earth. There are also signs of water near two
much closer stars Epsilon Eridani, a Sun-like
star 10 light years away, and Lalande 21185, a
red dwarf about 8 light years away. Between them
they may have three planets with a similar mass
to Jupiter, but the evidence is weaker than for
Upsilon Andromedae's planets. Although having
water does not necessarily make a planet
habitable, the result would at least show that
one of the key chemicals for life is common on
alien worlds. "Water's at the top of the
shopping list of ingredients for life," says Hugh
Jones of Liverpool John Moores University, whose
team announced a new Jupiter-mass planet this
week. "This is a very exciting first step."