What do you think the BLG in the system’s name stands for?
Obviously, it’s a euphemism for “B*****m”.

‘ … Or at least my cut’n'paste version of it …

Sorry. I’m sure y’all get the gist of it anyhow.

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Oh no, its an apostrophe!
Don’t you mean a catastrophe?
No, worse than that, an apostrophe. Catastrophes we can understand,
apostrophes get everyone confused!

Regarding the smallest of the pulsar planets (& thx David Bennett too) from my article on ’26 Remarkable Exoplanets’ in the SA Astronomical Society’s newsletter ‘The Bulletin’ the info coming via various sources* :

“PSR B 1257+12 : Discovered in 1991 these pulsar planets were the first ever found. Four very low mass worlds orbit a pulsar with the inner three spaced like a half-sized model of our inner solar system and the outermost just 1/5th Plutoâ??s mass at a distance equivalent to the asteroid belt in our system.”

So we recognise exoplanets as small as 1/5th Pluto are planets! Now that sounds like Pluto (& Eris & perhaps also Ceres & Charon ) desertve to be termed planets to me!

Secondly from the same source (which was compiled from other sources ..*) :

“2M 1207b : The first exoplanet photographed â?? in 2004 on April 27th – by a European-American team using the Yepun telescope in Chile – although contending claims exist. This planet has 5 Jupiter masses and orbits 55 AU from a brown dwarf with 25 Jupiter masses with both objects having an estimated age of only 8 million years.”

So that’s at least one other brown dwarf with planet combo known .. plus there’s the case of the brown dwarf Cha 110913-773444 whichis known to have a protoplanetary disk forming planets a discovery chronicled -complete with awesome artists comparion versus 55 Cancris in the Jan-Feb 2006 issue of ‘Sky & Space’ magazine (P.42,”Found lanets in the Making” by David Reneke.)

So fantastic as this discovery is – & my congrats to the team who discovered it & the BA for his coverage here it’s not the first time planets or their makings have been found for brown dwarfs .. & I’m guessing there’ll be more too! 8)
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* Compiled from various sources? OK these would be :

“Sources & further reading :

Bad Astronomy : http://www.badastronomy.com/
Exoplanets catalogue : http://exoplanets.org/
Extrasolar planets modelling & discussion site : http://www.oklo.org/
Kalerâ??s Planet Project : http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/pp.html
NASA PlanetQuest site : http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
Space.com â?? astronomy & space exploration news : space.com
Sol Station â?? Gliese 581 page : http://www.solstation.com/stars/gl581.htm

Plus numerous articles & news items from magazines incl. â??Sky & Spaceâ??, â??Astronomyâ??, â??Sky at Nightâ??, â??Astronomy Nowâ??, â??Sky & Telescopeâ?? & various scientific papers avail. online.”

***

Yeah, sorry I know that last part there is more than a little vague but there were just too many to include in the society newsletter – it would’ve taken up a few pages mostly of small “astro-news” type items and paper cites …

“In the end, we have at least one very cool thing about this announcement, and that’s the lowest mass planet yet found.”

Um .. isn’t the coolest thing going to be the likely temperature? Y’know the coolest star, a freezing planet …

At that mass, it’s almost certainly a rocky or icy body, and not a gas giant like Jupiter. And, if it does indeed orbit a brown dwarf, well, that’s pretty excellent too. But either way, say hello to our little friends.

Er … oka-ay..

Hello!
HELLO!
HEEEEELLLLLLOOOOOOOO!!!

Mm.. I don’t think it heard me!

Or maybe its just being rude!

Then again maybe its just the delay as myvoice travels through vacuum* to the star and for its reply toget get back .. my distant descendents are going to be very surprised in about 3000 years time!
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* Sound in vacuum .. Oh. Yeah. That could explain why … Or maybe we’ll call it a telepathic ‘hello’ ..? Or not.

“An object less than about 8% of the Sun’s mass won’t be able to squeeze hydrogen together hard enough to fuse it. In that case, it’s called a brown dwarf. It can stay warm for a few billion years just from the leftover heat of its formation, leaking out radiation slowly but never able to regenerate it.

The thing is, the exact mass of the newly found star is not known, so it may be just below or just above that limit.”

What if this star (& please let’s give it a real name!) is exactly on the limit – what does that make it?

Smallest red dwarf? Largest brown dwarf? What?

Is there sucha thing as a grey dwarf?

Neither black nor white nor red nor brown but something other,
Have we found?

CJSF

It’s obvious the Monolith had something to do with this.

“Not to mention that if the artist just painted the light side of the planet people would be asking him why it was pink.”

Couldn’t we have an absurdist artist conception of a planet?

Irishman wrote:

Uh, you do realize this is an artist’s conception of what the planet might look like based solely upon an estimate of the mass of the planet and distance from it’s star? What exactly are you expecting the artist to draw? Beautiful landscapes? An ocean view? Skyscrapers?

Yes…

…but beautiful landscapes, an ocean view and skyscrapers would be nice…especially with a pink sunset thrown in.

/wink