5 ms·
Okay I'm trying to understand exactly what we're looking at. So apparently the star has been blacked out in order to see the exoplanet which is on the lower lef
by insickness 13y ago
Okay I'm trying to understand exactly what we're looking at. So apparently the star has been blacked out in order to see the exoplanet which is on the lower left. It says here that the blue circle is the size of Neptune's orbit around the sun:
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1324a/ http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1324a/
But how big is the star in relation to this? Is the star the size of the blue circle or is it smaller like the size of the white flash shape in the middle? If it's the size of the blue circle, that's a REALLY close orbit for a planet. If the star is the size of the white flash shape in the middle, that makes more sense, except that the star looks almost the same size as the planet.
- luke_s 13y agoI would imagine that both the star and the planet if actually shown properly 'to scale' in the image would be tiny pin pricks. What you would see if you were 'standing there' is quite different to what you see in the image. The fact that the planet and star appear much larger is probably caused by a few factors - firstly the planet is probably only taking up a few pixels on the telescopes CCD - The image has been enlarged and post processed. Secondly the telescope will be affected by diffraction which means you will not get a proper single tiny point of light and instead will get something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airy-pattern.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airy-pattern.svg Finally you need to deal with all the air that the light has to travel through before hitting the telescopes CCD - this will distort the final image, like looking at the bottom of a pond through ripples.