Blog

Sep 20, 2015

This is the Best Footage Yet of an Exoplanet Orbiting its Star

Posted by in category: space

And…it’s literally six seconds of pixelated blob. But before you laugh, know this: Capturing that planetary transit you just witnessed was no easy task.

You’re looking at Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant ten to twelve times the mass of Jupiter that orbits a star over 60 light years away. That’s 3.527 × 1014 miles from us, and we’re actually able to see it! If you’re still not impressed, try this on for size: Beta Pictoris b is roughly a million times dimmer than its parent star.

Read more

Comments are closed.