NZ astronomers help discover new solar system

15 February 2008

 New Zealand astronomers have found a new solar system somewhere within our Milky Way. Before you pack you bags and sell your house to move there, you may want to know just how much we know about these new planets. Even the nearest star is so far away that even with the most powerful telescopes all we can see is a dot in the sky. Astronomers determine everything they know about stars by analyzing the light it produces. The color of light may be able to tell you some things about the star but not if it has planets around it.

 This new system was discovered using a system called gravitational microlensing. This process requires someone to watch the light produced from a star and see if the light shifts unexpectedly. If it does it is possible that a planet just got close enough to the path of light that it bent it enough to notice. Since we no nothing about the stars but the light they produce we have to guess what the mass of the star is in order to do these calculations.

 Always take notice of the actual facts that are known before believing the conclusions. What we do know is that we see a star get brighter and then dimmer. From this they guess the size of the star, then calculate what size planet could cause that effect. Does this mean there is a planet there? Maybe...

 There could be several things that would cause this effect. Perhaps there is a dust cloud between us and the star and it just passed through a area that was less dense. Maybe there is a planet there. I wouldn't doubt there are other systems like ours out there, but I do highly doubt there is another planet like earth. Even if there was, how could we prove it?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10492595