Post# 1601083626

26-Sep-2020 7:27 am


#astronomy

Article : "Planet discovered in another galaxy."

Here's how. They found an extremely powerful x-ray source. Which is sparse in that galaxy. Figured out that should be a binary star where one of the stars is a black hole sucking up gas from the other star.

Now this x-ray source passed through a eclipse in 2012. Explanation of which is that it has a planet revolving around it.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/first-evidence-of-a-planet-in-another-galaxy

Interestingly the first planets we discovered outside our solar system were discovered following this eclipse watching method. Recently I was reading about a possible way of taking direct pictures of an extra-solar planet by putting a camera 300 AU far from the sun and then using sun's gravity for lensing.

And in the 80s when Carl Sagan was describing his possibility of every star having multiple planets like us but none discovered yet -- I thought discovering any extra-solar planet was impossible forever. How would they detect a planet orbiting a star that's where the star is just a point without dimensions in our view.

Tech has advanced so far after that.

    Comments:
  • ^ oh. couldn't recall the name while writing it.

26-Sep-2020 7:27 am

Published
26-Sep-2020