The creator of the GIF above used a data from a range of different telescopes and wavelengths, whereas I made this with using data only from same telescope (Keck), instrument, and wavelength (3.5 microns; near infrared).
That’s right. We only have images take every year or so, so I did a motion interpolation between the images using Keplers laws. Diffraction close in gets pulled around by the interpolation.
Worth being very clear that this is not a real video of the system, it's 10 static images with a few hundred interpolated "fake" frames. Still very cool though.
Amazing. Scrolling down one of the comments has an animation of starts around the center of the Milky Way. I have seen a few short ones of nebulae. There should be much much more of this sort of thing.
I appreciate that scientist are not always after the pretty pictures. They can be expensive, do not always give the data needed, and the experiments do not always produce data that has obvious pretty picture potential. Still, for the average non professional scientist (me) the pictures are about all I will ever get out of the science.
The galactic center data actually proved there was a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and weighed it precisely from those stars motions. The name of the account that posted that animation (Sagittarius A*) is the name of that supermassive black hole.
The term I would use instead is that the data provided observational support of a hypothesis. It didn't "prove" anything- proofs only exist in math. (yes, I know people use "prove" is colloquial way, but it's misleading, especially in observational work where you can't control variables to find causality.
Black holes probably disappear due to Hawking radiation, but I don’t think we have observational evidence and the process takes forever for the black holes you can observe.
> There should be much much more of this sort of thing.
As more telescopes come online, there'll be more data available for this type of stuff. You gotta realize that when a telescope only looks at something once per year, it takes a long time to gather enough data for these types of images to be created. My go to example is the motion of stars around SagA*.
A good chunk of science communication centres around how one conveys the wow factor to folks who aren't already obsessed with the particular field. Images like this really help sell it to the rest of us
I swear I'm not trying to criticize, but, uh--why only 10 or so photos? Why not just film it long term? Is it our position in earth's orbit that only lets us image that system once a year or so?
The Roman Coronagraph is designed to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, which is 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
If this remains a long term design limitation it'll be interesting to see if people design satellite hardware that consists of multiple individual rectangular slab sized things (generally same size/shape per piece as starlink v3 test satellites which have unfolding PV/antenna), that can latch together once dispensed, and further unfold.
Such an architecture might not be an impossible design consideration if the goal is to have something big like the sun-shade/cold side of the Webb telescope.
I can't imagine that there will not be other versions. The Pez dispenser is just solving the problem at hand. Eventually, I wouldn't be surprised to see cargo bay doors similar to the shuttle's.
Also check out the Simulated Observation of the Solar System by the Habitable Worlds Observatory (under "Videos"), expected to be launched in the 2040s, the first to be able to detect Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars! https://habitableworldsobservatory.org/multimedia
Space and the enormity of it breaks your mind when you start thinking about it.
The star in the middle of the animation, is approximately 20AU (Astronomical Units) in size looking at the scale line. 20AU is approximately 1.8b miles/3b kilometres or approximately the distance from the Sun to Uranus.
If Google's correct, if everyone on Earth lived on that star - each and every one of us could have a backyard larger than the surface area of Earth ;p
I don't think you should infer the radius of the star from the blacked out region. I think they just do that because the luminosity of the star is so intense it would blow away the sensitivity needed to see the planets. So they set everything to zero for a certain zone on the lens/sensor. It's not the physical surface of the star.
It looks like HR8799 that the animation is based on is about 1.5x the radius of the sun.
That being said, my silly point still holds - there are stars that are truly massive. Stephenson 2-18 is approximately the size I mentioned, which is genuinely impossible to comprehend.
There are a handful of known red supergiant stars around 15 AU in diameter, 20 AU would be pushing past the boundaries of what we believe would be possible.
The star in the video, HR 8799, is about 50% larger than the sun.
Wow, in terms of angle, how far are these planets separated from the star?
I always thought we would never be able to image something like that. The distances would be too small and the contrast too large to figure something at the resolution we can get on earth. I'll need to read up on how this was done.
The scale bar (20 AU) represents 20 time the distance between the Earth and the sun. This star is about 41 parsecs away, so the angular size of that scale bar is about half an arcsec. (One degree is split into 60 arcminutes, one arcminute into 60 arcseconds. Just like a clock).
That angle is about the diameter of a US quarter coin seen from 11km (7mi) away.
Yea, the planets are gigantic, and in distant orbits from their star. I don't think we even have the ability yet to directly image exoplanets much smaller than, say, Saturn, or closer to their stars than Saturn.
The noise from the blocked-out star noticably decreases in 2017. Is that due to changes in the stars' activity cycle, or is that due to better processing/capture technology?
What are the odds of there being smaller exoplanets that are effectively being outshone by the others? Since each one these is more massive than Jupitar.
I will just say that this short movie is something most beautiful I've seen in last several years. To be able to see this, for real, not as a side-effect to the star is absolutely mind blowing.
From ~0:04 - 0:05, two dots at ~10 and 8 o'clock fade in and out simultaneously, with roughly the size and brightness of the planets. They peak at observation ~2016-07-06. Any idea what they are?
Their balanced position and simultaneous changes make them seem like an artifact of the imaging.
They're present for multiple dates at the bottom, and fade in and out. Are those dates and the fading fabricated as some sort of intermediate state and inserted into the animation? I did briefly look for something stating how the animation was made but didn't see anything.
Also, they are too regular in position and in their timeing (simultaneous) to be random noise, but could be an artifact of some part of the imaging and processing chain.
Yes, they were not very clear about this but my understanding is that there are only 10 real images, i.e. less than one per (earth) year. All other frames are interpolated, which can pretty accurately animate the positions of the planets, but is presumably completely inaccurate for anything else.
Not to self-plug, but here's my video of the same four planets:
https://sefffal.github.io/images/orbital-animation.mp4
The creator of the GIF above used a data from a range of different telescopes and wavelengths, whereas I made this with using data only from same telescope (Keck), instrument, and wavelength (3.5 microns; near infrared).
I’m curious what that blight red smoke flickering around the star is. Some kind of interplanatory gas?
I think it might just be diffraction artifacts animated by the interpolation (I hereby invoke cunnignhams law)
That’s right. We only have images take every year or so, so I did a motion interpolation between the images using Keplers laws. Diffraction close in gets pulled around by the interpolation.
Worth being very clear that this is not a real video of the system, it's 10 static images with a few hundred interpolated "fake" frames. Still very cool though.
Amazing. Scrolling down one of the comments has an animation of starts around the center of the Milky Way. I have seen a few short ones of nebulae. There should be much much more of this sort of thing.
I appreciate that scientist are not always after the pretty pictures. They can be expensive, do not always give the data needed, and the experiments do not always produce data that has obvious pretty picture potential. Still, for the average non professional scientist (me) the pictures are about all I will ever get out of the science.
The galactic center data actually proved there was a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and weighed it precisely from those stars motions. The name of the account that posted that animation (Sagittarius A*) is the name of that supermassive black hole.
This work earned the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/summary/
The term I would use instead is that the data provided observational support of a hypothesis. It didn't "prove" anything- proofs only exist in math. (yes, I know people use "prove" is colloquial way, but it's misleading, especially in observational work where you can't control variables to find causality.
Can you explain the past tense "there was" ? Is there a reason for a black hole to dissapear?
Black holes probably disappear due to Hawking radiation, but I don’t think we have observational evidence and the process takes forever for the black holes you can observe.
The black hole still exists (probably), the hypothesis that it existed was proven in the past.
> There should be much much more of this sort of thing.
As more telescopes come online, there'll be more data available for this type of stuff. You gotta realize that when a telescope only looks at something once per year, it takes a long time to gather enough data for these types of images to be created. My go to example is the motion of stars around SagA*.
A good chunk of science communication centres around how one conveys the wow factor to folks who aren't already obsessed with the particular field. Images like this really help sell it to the rest of us
I swear I'm not trying to criticize, but, uh--why only 10 or so photos? Why not just film it long term? Is it our position in earth's orbit that only lets us image that system once a year or so?
Telescope time is precious.
I'm excited for the leap in this tech that the Nancy Grace Roman telescope's new chronograph promises.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-roman-coronagraph-inst...
The Roman Coronagraph is designed to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, which is 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
I am as well and hopefully Starship allows even larger telescopes!
Starship can do it.
As long as the telescope can fit through the Starlink Pez dispenser.
If this remains a long term design limitation it'll be interesting to see if people design satellite hardware that consists of multiple individual rectangular slab sized things (generally same size/shape per piece as starlink v3 test satellites which have unfolding PV/antenna), that can latch together once dispensed, and further unfold.
Such an architecture might not be an impossible design consideration if the goal is to have something big like the sun-shade/cold side of the Webb telescope.
I can't imagine that there will not be other versions. The Pez dispenser is just solving the problem at hand. Eventually, I wouldn't be surprised to see cargo bay doors similar to the shuttle's.
Also check out the Simulated Observation of the Solar System by the Habitable Worlds Observatory (under "Videos"), expected to be launched in the 2040s, the first to be able to detect Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars! https://habitableworldsobservatory.org/multimedia
DrBecky's video on it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=z2JIkAPcdnU
Space and the enormity of it breaks your mind when you start thinking about it.
The star in the middle of the animation, is approximately 20AU (Astronomical Units) in size looking at the scale line. 20AU is approximately 1.8b miles/3b kilometres or approximately the distance from the Sun to Uranus.
If Google's correct, if everyone on Earth lived on that star - each and every one of us could have a backyard larger than the surface area of Earth ;p
I don't think you should infer the radius of the star from the blacked out region. I think they just do that because the luminosity of the star is so intense it would blow away the sensitivity needed to see the planets. So they set everything to zero for a certain zone on the lens/sensor. It's not the physical surface of the star.
Good call!
It looks like HR8799 that the animation is based on is about 1.5x the radius of the sun.
That being said, my silly point still holds - there are stars that are truly massive. Stephenson 2-18 is approximately the size I mentioned, which is genuinely impossible to comprehend.
There are a handful of known red supergiant stars around 15 AU in diameter, 20 AU would be pushing past the boundaries of what we believe would be possible.
The star in the video, HR 8799, is about 50% larger than the sun.
There are many more of these : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...
Wow, in terms of angle, how far are these planets separated from the star?
I always thought we would never be able to image something like that. The distances would be too small and the contrast too large to figure something at the resolution we can get on earth. I'll need to read up on how this was done.
The scale bar (20 AU) represents 20 time the distance between the Earth and the sun. This star is about 41 parsecs away, so the angular size of that scale bar is about half an arcsec. (One degree is split into 60 arcminutes, one arcminute into 60 arcseconds. Just like a clock).
That angle is about the diameter of a US quarter coin seen from 11km (7mi) away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_8799
Yea, the planets are gigantic, and in distant orbits from their star. I don't think we even have the ability yet to directly image exoplanets much smaller than, say, Saturn, or closer to their stars than Saturn.
TL;DR - Two inside (16, 26AU) and two outside (43, 69AU) Pluto's orbit (39AU). They are all estimated to be a bit bigger than Jupiter.
The noise from the blocked-out star noticably decreases in 2017. Is that due to changes in the stars' activity cycle, or is that due to better processing/capture technology?
I do not know, but my best guess would be an improved post processing algorithm was introduced.
Wouldn't you just post-process all images again at that point?
I believe it's because the star's brightness does fluctuate, so activity cycle based?
What are the odds of there being smaller exoplanets that are effectively being outshone by the others? Since each one these is more massive than Jupitar.
They need to remove that one frame
I will just say that this short movie is something most beautiful I've seen in last several years. To be able to see this, for real, not as a side-effect to the star is absolutely mind blowing.
When my mother was born, plate tectonics was a hypothesis. When I was born we didn't know for certain if planets existed outside of our solar system.
When my grandparents were born, we didn't know there were other galaxies.
From ~0:04 - 0:05, two dots at ~10 and 8 o'clock fade in and out simultaneously, with roughly the size and brightness of the planets. They peak at observation ~2016-07-06. Any idea what they are?
Their balanced position and simultaneous changes make them seem like an artifact of the imaging.
It looks like they're only present for one real frame (of the original 10), so very possible that it's just noise in that frame.
They're present for multiple dates at the bottom, and fade in and out. Are those dates and the fading fabricated as some sort of intermediate state and inserted into the animation? I did briefly look for something stating how the animation was made but didn't see anything.
Also, they are too regular in position and in their timeing (simultaneous) to be random noise, but could be an artifact of some part of the imaging and processing chain.
Yes, they were not very clear about this but my understanding is that there are only 10 real images, i.e. less than one per (earth) year. All other frames are interpolated, which can pretty accurately animate the positions of the planets, but is presumably completely inaccurate for anything else.