New to the forum, just thought I’d introduce myself

Thanks Tom Marking some great examples there & yes I too would love to see more astronomical art featuring those worlds – and have those exoplanetary systems given halfway reasonable names not just forgettable and unpronouncable catalogue numbers!

Bill

I wonder if the folks at WooS have ever heard of something called the CHZ (Circumstellar Habitable Zone). Hoth doesn’t seem to be located inside of it. The following exoplanets are located inside of it for their entire orbit assuming certain values for the albedo and greenhouse temperature increase. I’d like to see some artistic renditions of some of moons of these planets which have a much better chance of containing life than Hoth does:

HD 10647b:
Semi-major axis = 2.03 AU
Eccentricity = 0.16
Periastrion = 1.71 AU
Apastrion = 2.35 AU
Orbital period = 1,003 days
Mass is greater than 0.93 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.15 and greenhouse temperature increase = 80 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 1.49 AU to 2.36 AU

HD 134987 b:
Semi-major axis = 0.82 AU
Eccentricity = 0.224
Periastrion = 0.64 AU
Apastrion = 1.00 AU
Orbital period = 258 days
Mass is greater than 1.61 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.84 and greenhouse temperature increase = 79 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 0.638 AU to 1.01 AU

HD 23079b:
Semi-major axis = 1.60 AU
Eccentricity = 0.102
Periastrion = 1.44 AU
Apastrion = 1.76 AU
Orbital period = 730.6 days
Mass is greater than 2.45 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.15 and greenhouse temperature increase = 70 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 1.14 AU to 1.77 AU

HD 28185b:
Semi-major axis = 1.03 AU
Eccentricity = 0.070
Periastrion = 0.96 AU
Apastrion = 1.10 AU
Orbital period = 383 days
Mass is greater than 5.72 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.37 and greenhouse temperature increase = 40 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 0.776 AU to 1.14 AU

HD 188015 b:
Semi-major axis = 1.20 AU
Eccentricity = 0.137
Periastrion = 1.04 AU
Apastrion = 1.36 AU
Orbital period = 461 days
Mass is greater than 1.50 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.26 and greenhouse temperature increase = 40 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 0.923 AU to 1.36 AU

HD 99109b:
Semi-major axis = 1.10 AU
Eccentricity = 0.09
Periastrion = 1.00 AU
Apastrion = 1.20 AU
Orbital period = 439 days
Mass is greater than 0.502 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.15 and greenhouse temperature increase = 48 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 0.804 AU to 1.20 AU

HD 108874 b:
Semi-major axis = 1.05 AU
Eccentricity = 0.114
Periastrion = 0.93 AU
Apastrion = 1.17 AU
Orbital period = 394 days
Mass is greater than 1.30 Jupiter masses
If albedo = 0.37 and greenhouse temperature increase = 40 deg K then
habitable zone goes from 0.820 AU to 1.21 AU

“Decency” is all the mind of the beholder!
Its like art that way.

Correction (sigh) :

“On Earth we know of extremophiles and bacteria that can endure staggering amounts of heat, cold, radiation, lack of water, the presence of concentrated acids and alkais, etc .. Below our feet it has been suggested a whole region of ‘deep hot biosphere’ exists perhaps including silicon based microbes!”

Tom Marking’s quote was meant to be in italics too ..

When is this editing option coming again?

Any chance it could speed up & get here! I need it yesterday!

Our species lives around Pluto’s core-mantle interface on a thin layer of plutonium that’s found in the Plutonian core. Our mantle is like Euopa’s (& even Eris’es) in having a subterrerean ocean hidden below an icy crust. Charon’s tides keeps our planet nice and geologically active – Nix & hydras’ tides not-so much!

Its a pretty cool way to live!

We’ve been around far longer than your youthful species and are (hate to boast but true) far more advanced than Humanity. When your ‘New Horizons’ probe flies by you’ll see our cities as hollows on the Plutonian surface & then you’ll find us out officially.

We’ve actually got a faster than light wormhole device and lots more techno-goodies which we were going to share with humanity to fix things up for ya a litle – getting your spacecraft to all the planets (Pluto most of all!) was our criteria for you proving yourselves worthy of this aid.

But then you had to go & spoil it all by refusing our world proper planetary status so now you’re going to miss out! We’re kinda patriotic that way!

Well you’ll just miss out – at least until you’ve included us on your planets list again and given each of the anti-Pluto IAU members a televised kick up the backside anyway!

Bear in mind too that life has been known or speculated to exist in some pretty astonishing and harsh places.

On Earth we know of extremophiles and bacteria thatcan endure staggeringamoiunts of heat, cold, radiation, lack of water, presenceof acids and alkais etc .. Below our feet itha sbeen suggested awhole region of deep hotbiosphere exists perhaps including silicon based microbes!

Elsewhere within our solar system there is possible life on Mars, Europa, Encleadus, Titan, etc .. Arthur C.Clarke has plausibly imagined aerial lifeforms living in the clouds of Jupiter. Ben Bova has made at least a reasonable speculative case for life existing in his novels on Mars, in the clouds and on the surface of venus, even in the rings of Saturn – see his Sf novels.

Now I know that’s science fiction where imagination is given more reign but extraopolating to how ‘Hoth’ may be (&how very little wereallyknow for certain about it) I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of ‘Hoth’ having life. Not that I’d put the odds at 100% or anywhere near that but still ..

… I’d love to see us invent an FTL drive and go see!

(Yes, yes, I know that may well NOT be possible either. I love both Sf and science – wish the latter would help accomplish the dreams of the former a bit more rather than squash ‘em with gosh-durned relativity & so forth.;-) )

“Also, I see that you have a bad problem with “typos”. I’m sure that you will be relieved to hear that according to the Discover Web Editor, Amos Kenigsberg, we will have a preview/edit facility here on B.A. Blog sometime early next year in January/February.”

He-elll yes!!! Can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned! Great news.

Tom Marking said on December 10th, 2008 at 12:27 pm :

” Its [Worlds of Other Suns) an exoplanets website (not mine but a fave of mine) with examples of … er very optimistically but well written info & superbly illustrated exoplanets as named (Hoth Tatooine etc ..)

Mind you, we don’t actually know for sure that ‘Hoth’ is frozen either .. Who is to say that it hasn’t got a fair bit of geothermal heat and all sorts of other energy sources keeping it or areas on it warm? (Meteorite impacts? Extreme atmospheric factors like greenhosue gases? Pyromanic alien friends? )

The ‘WooS’ was a site I stumbled over when searching for exoplanet info which seemed, heck, still seems pretty good. Yes they are probably being wa-aay overly optimistic when it comes to the chances of life on “Hoth” – but, hey, we can’t really prove that wrong now can we?

(ok, ok, I * know * the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claims and the chances aren’t 100 % as they suggest and so on but well ..putting that aside I still reckon its a pretty good website & I like their naming ideas -& spaceart – too! )

I’m not a cosmochemsit, don’t claim to be, but when I took Organic Chemestry
I had learned that it was not just CO an CO2 that are not considered organic compounds, but also carbonates, cyanides, and allotroic forms of carbon itself.
Happy to be corrected if need be.

Glenn, in my understanding, CO, CO2, carbonate and bicarbonate are considered inorganic as you indicate. Elemental carbon is also considered inorganic, but cyanides depend on the compound. If the cyanide is clearly ionic in nature, as it is in KCN, it is considered inorganic. If, however, it forms a functional group within an organic compound (such as acetonitrile), it is quite OK to consider CN to be organic.

[cultural reference]
Phil…I like your use of “embiggen” underneath the picture. If anyone complains that it isn’t a real word tell them it is a perfectly “cromulent” word.
[/cultural reference]

Smile!

Concerning the planet Hoth (i.e., OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb) the URL you provided says the following:

“WoOS gives this planet a 100% probability of harboring it’s own life and ecosystem, a notable first among the discovered Exoplanets. It would be almost impossible for such a world to not have some form of life.”

Huh? The planet is totally frozen and yet it has a 100% probability of having life? What/who is WoOS and what criteria are being used for this probability? According to Wikipedia the planet’s surface temperature is only 50 degrees Kelvin. This is a slam dunk for life? I don’t think so.

I think steam can exist at the prevailing surface temperature of 1,100 deg K. If I’m not mistaken don’t some pressurized water nuclear reactors have steam that hot? I believe you have to go up to temperatures similar to the surface of stars (~3,000 deg K) before you get significant thermal dissociation.

The UV flux might be a different issue. HD 189733 is a K1-2 main sequence star with a luminosity of 0.264 suns and surface temperature of 4,980 deg K. That means that out of a total luminosity of 0.264 suns, 0.0135 suns (5.1%) is emitted in the ultraviolet, 0.100 suns (37.9%) is emitted in visible light, and 0.1505 (57.0%) suns is emitted in the infrared. The UV flux landing on HD 189733 b is quite substantial, 19,200 watts per square meter. So there should be substantial UV-induced photodissociation of H2O into the hydroxyl molecule OH and hydrogen H. I wonder if hydroxyl has been detected in the spectrum. Does anyone know?

Probably most theories of planet formation would predict a rapid rotation for Jovian sized planets or bigger planets. However, this particular planet is thought to be tidally locked to its star so that it’s rotation period is 2.2 days – 5 times slower than Jupiter. So perhaps it’s magnetic field is less than Jupiter’s, say 1 gauss at the equator instead of Jupiter’s value of 4 gauss at the equator. Nevertheless, there should be a substantial magnetosphere to protect the atmosphere.

On the other hand, Venus has no internally dynamo-generated magnetic field and yet it has an induced magnetosphere caused by the interaction of the planet with the solar wind. Apparently this weak induced magnetosphere has been sufficient to prevent the loss of Venus’ atmosphere into space during the last 4.5 billion years. So an internal magnetic field is not absolutely necessary to prevent atmospheric loss.

She asked me why the new organic chemistry building they were constructing next door needed so many fume cupboards if it was all organic…

I can’t recall my response.

just to note, this was first reported back on November 23

Thanks, I was just about to comment on that.

The web really needs a better way to recognize when corpses of old press releases are paraded from their graves in a 2nd round. [And let's face it, media isn't known for actually looking at, even less remembering, what they print in order to get the ad money flowing in.] As it is, it feels like looking at the optical echoecho ofof thethe webweb.

Not that it can’t trigger a good post, of course!

we will have a preview/edit facility here on B.A. Blog sometime early next year in January/February

Ah, a late yule gift then.

Any chances we may have a sneak preview…, um, “google beta release”, of the preview facility? It doesn’t have to be perfect (edit functionality and/or spel chekkers, for example) to be useful in comparison with what we have now.

You’re welcome! If one had a preview/edit facility here, I would have ‘tweaked’ the lettering underneath that image because it did not space out as well as I had expected.

Also, I see that you have a bad problem with “typos”. I’m sure that you will be relieved to hear that according to the Discover Web Editor, Amos Kenigsberg, we will have a preview/edit facility here on B.A. Blog sometime early next year in January/February.

So StevoR, you saying catalogue numbers are * indecent * then?;-)

Cool, got meself some new swear words :

Hey, HD 189733b you ya piece of OGLE-o5-390-el B*!”

Nah, not quite the same is it?

Neat news, nowhere near as awesome as imaging Fomalhaut b and that other stars three exoplanets (wha’ waz its’ number again? Hmm… StevoR may have a point!) Sorta expect Hot Jupiter gas gainst to have well .. gases even H20 & Co2 .. but still cool to find out & good work.

Sigh. Have I finally got it right?

Just think, I could do all this in * one * post & not * three * if I could just @$#!#@@# EDIT here! Sigh.

PS. Yeah, there are other typos, hope y’all get the gist anyhow. Yeah, I know I should check what I type more carefully and prob’ly not type so quickly. Mea culpa. I’m a fallible human being. As they say :

To err is human, to really mess things up requires a computer!

Anyway what I said was :

“Now those sort of names beat catalogue designations anyday if y’ask me or, I’d think, most others and instantly give some idea of the exoplanet’s nature or signifcinceor location that inspires,sometimes amuses and makes it less just a number to people – which in turn helps inpromotingand making welcoming astronomy to society. ”

But what I’d meant to have written (& thought I *had* written until I saw it on screen (Sigh) was :

Now those sort of names (Bellopheron, Hoth, Tattooine, Balsawood Planet, Polydeuces, etc ..) beat catalogue designations (like HD 189733b, TrEs-4, OGLE-05-390-Lb even 51Peg b) anyday if y’ask me – or, I’d think, most other reasonable people. Such evocative and instinctively pronouncable names instantly give folks some idea of an exoplanet’s nature, its significance or its location that inspires, sometimes amuses and always makes it more just a dull, hard to remember, harder to pronounce number to people!

Which in turn helps in promoting and making astronomy more welcoming and easier to imagine for broader society. Having such amazing marvellous exoplanets reamining so poorly non-named is doing astronomy in general a dis-service. In My Humble Opinion Naturally (natch)!

(Now if only I could correct my first post properly. Sigh. Please Dr Phil Plait, please!)

I can’t begin to express how excited I am to see this finally happen. It’s a real milestone.

Here’s to the spectroscopic analysis of many more planetary atmospheres to come!

You can go to one of my sources – “Worlds of other Suns” – via clicking my name above – for the named worlds listed earlier. Its an exoplanets website (not mine but a fave of mine) with examples of … er very optimistically but well written info & superbly illustrated exoplanets as named (Hoth Tatooine etc ..) Hopefully interesting for people! Hopefully the link’ll work!