Mystery Objects, Near and Far

September 15, 2008

Ok ladies and gents, this week has started with a bang!

Not only did Mr. John McCain and his camp answer the 2008 Science Debate questions, but now we have two things that should blown your mind into slushy goo:

1) First exoplanet imaged directly around a Sun-like star(?)
The skinny on this amazing image:

• object name: 1RXS J160929.1-210524
• possibly not a planet (more observations needed)
• 500 light-years from Earth
• eight times heavier than Jupiter
• more than 300 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun
• host star is about 7/8 the mass of the Sun

Look at that tiny orange splotch at the top left -- that's it. If it is a planet, it's huge. Simply colossal.

My non-expert guess: it'd have to be mostly gas, and if you think "a gassy planet that big should be a star!" -- sorry! It's about 60-70 Jupiter's too skinny to collapse into a star. (For an actual expert's take on this, do check out Phil Plait's post.)

* For the space dorks: The paper.

2) Mystery object that came out of nowhere
The skinny on this amazing image:

• object name: CL 1432.5+3332.8
• no one has any clue what it is, but it's *probably* not a supernova
• between 130 light-years and 11 billion light-years from Earth (now that's a ballpark estimate)
• brightened and faded over the course of 200 days (in infrared light)
• caught on camera by the Hubble Space Telescope

If you see a supernova in infrared, it usually brightens and fades within a few days. But something brightening over 100 days, then fading away? Friggin' weird.

The scientists who wrote the paper (see below) seem to think it happened outside of the Milky Way.
My non-expert guess -- and this is totally far out and likely wrong -- is that it's like the incredible gamma-ray burst we heard about last week, but one blocked out by enormous clouds of gas and dust.

Might that heat up the material to extreme temperatures, causing it to gain then lose heat over 200 days via infrared? I'm not sure. (Think of how long it takes metal to cool down once red-hot.)

* For the space nerds: The paper.

I'd bet money that Ray Villard -- Cosmic Ray blogger here at Discovery Space and bonifide exoplanet junky -- is giggling with excitment about these news nuggets, so be on the lookout for something from him soon!