A couple weeks ago astronomers announced that they had, for the first time in human history, directly observed planets outside our little corner of the Universe, the Solar System. This announcement inspired me to smear some iPhone pixels around and create this image.
All previously known extra-solar planets have been deduced by gravitational fluctuations or by minute diminituions of the parent star, but "Fomalhaut B" was spotted in images taken by our old friend, Hubble. It's somewhere between half and twice the size of Jupiter, and orbits nearly three times farther from Fomalhaut than Neptune orbits Sol. Photographing it was like photographing a single grain of sand on Baker Beach in San Francisco while standing on the moon.
We live science fiction every day.
-- Message posted from my iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment