Invisible planet discovered

an invisible thing in space? guffaw !

reply to post by JROCK2527


It's not invisible, that's layman MSNBC language for the stupid. It can't be seen it's too far away, math suggests it's there and the minute light dimming of the star they can measure plus there may be a detected wobble in the star they can see which is how they discover 99% of planets outside of our solar system, even closer ones than 650 light years away.

Fact is we have only actually imaged about 2 or 3 confirmed discovered planets outside of our solar system, out of something like the list might be about 5,000 by now, so simple math suggests I'm not exaggerating the percentage I just posted.

Books and reputable websites can educate you about how this is done if you read the right references.

Originally posted by XPLodER
i think they rely on the change in expected orbital period to extrapolate the "invisable" planet,
it cannot be detected by the planet passage induced change of light "eclipse" of the planet in front of the sun,
the second "invisable" planet is unseen but required to explain the orbital quirk of "being too slow" from transit to transit

i think thats what it means

xploder

That's what it says on the tin, the smaller body had no noticeable gravitational 'Tug' on its star.

Here is another blurb I found on this discovery from Nasa's site:

From: kepler.nasa.gov...

Invisible World Discovered


09.08.2011

See CfA Release 2011-24 Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011.

Excerpt: Cambridge, MA. Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has spotted a planet that alternately runs late and early in its orbit because a second, “invisible” world is tugging on it. This is the first definite detection of a previously unknown planet using this method. No other technique could have found the unseen companion.

“This invisible planet makes itself known by its influence on the planet we can detect,” said astronomer Sarah Ballard of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Ballard is lead author on the study, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
“It’s like having someone play a prank on you by ringing your doorbell and running away. You know someone was there, even if you don’t see them when you get outside,” she added.

Both the seen and unseen worlds orbit the Sun-like star Kepler-19, which is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. ...

The first planet, Kepler-19b, transits its star every 9 days and 7 hours. It orbits the star at a distance of 8.4 million miles, where it is heated to a temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Kepler-19b has a diameter of 18,000 miles, making it slightly more than twice the size of Earth….

If Kepler-19b were alone, each transit would follow the next like clockwork. Instead, the transits come up to five minutes early or five minutes late. Such transit timing variations show that another world’s gravity is pulling on Kepler-19b, alternately speeding it up or slowing it down. … the planet Neptune was discovered similarly.…

I found this interesting as it will hopefully help us to find other planets in our 'neighborhood'. I am in no way as educated in astronomy as others on this site, so I appreciate your comments/input on what I found. Thanks!!

This is legitimately cool. So as far as I can read with out my mind getting all boggled is that the biggest aspect of this discovery is that we now know that the method for detection actually works? And also does it refer to a planet that's outside of the visible spectrum, at least from this distance, or one that's perpetually blocked by a larger celestial body?

Do they mean invisible in the sense that it is literally unable to be detected by optical telescopes, or do they mean invisible just because they haven't directly observed it? I'm guessing the latter, unless there's a dark-matter planet orbiting a star somewhere.

Why wouldn't it be considered a moon? I mean if it's close enough to effect that planet's gravity, isn't it more sensible to call it a moon? Even if it is a very large moon? Does our moon effect our precession across the sky even minutely? Probably, is it small and dark enough not to be seen 675 lightyears away? Probably. I am just guessing here though.

Originally posted by Anonymouth
Here is an image of it.

That's clearly Planet X dude.

Originally posted by TupacShakur
Do they mean invisible in the sense that it is literally unable to be detected by optical telescopes, or do they mean invisible just because they haven't directly observed it? I'm guessing the latter, unless there's a dark-matter planet orbiting a star somewhere.

The haven't directly observed it one. The misleading title is just to lure in readers I presume.

Reminds me of this: ATS

Wow, that is so cool, i must admit.

Originally posted by Illustronic
It's not invisible, that's layman MSNBC language for the stupid. It can't be seen it's too far away, math suggests it's there and the minute light dimming of the star they can measure plus there may be a detected wobble in the star they can see which is how they discover 99% of planets outside of our solar system, even closer ones than 650 light years away.

The invisible planet is different. They apparently didn't see a transit dimming for the invisible planet which is why they call it invisible.

They detect the other planets via transit dimming so while the planet itself isn't directly "visible", its transit dimming is visible (hence, NOT invisible).

What makes this one unique is that they don't see any such transit dimming for it, they only infer the existence of the invisible planet from variations in other, "visible" transit dimmings.

Oh boy, they found a new wobble within a wobble which implied something else from their previous implication.

Seriously, wake me up when they have atmospheric spectrum data from other worlds or something. So tired of these announcements of "news" which tell you nothing. It really freaking matters that omicron seti alpha gamma XVIIV or whatever now has 9 planets instead of 8, and we know nothing about any of them except that they're all gas giants or huge hot balls of death, and we can't find the Earth-like planets for another 30 or 300 years.