Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken … John Keats, 1816
This image was released earlier today, in conjunction with a news release about the first map of an extrasolar planet.
This is not the actual map, of course, but instead an artist’s conception of HD 189733b, which some have dubbed the “Bulls-eye planet” because of the bright hot spot shown here. (Credit: David A. Aguilar, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) If you want to see the maps and some animations, look here.
This image - of a world so like our own solar system’s planet Jupiter and yet strangely extrasolar as well - is almost mind-bending in its evocativeness. Will we someday go to this place? It’s amazing to think that nearly 200 planets, surely each as unique as snowflakes, have been discovered orbiting stars other than our sun within our home galaxy, the Milky Way. All of these planets have been discovered in the past decade or so, often using a technique involving radial velocity: minute variations in the overall light of these distant systems, as the planets orbit their stars. There are even planets orbiting bright famliar stars, including the star Pollux in the constellation Gemini (thanks to Kelley Knight, for that info).
By the way, the image above is not Gliese 581 c, which is the new possibly habitable Earth-like planet - only 20 light-years away - discovered last month.
This image, of HD 189733b, shows an exoplanet some 63 light-years away, orbiting a yellow dwarf star in the direction of our constellation Vulpecula. This planet is now known to be extremely windy, with winds faster than the speed of sound. Meanwhile, another planet - HD 149026b - is now known to be extremely hot. Here’s more: A Tale of Two Exoplanets: One Incredibly Hot, the Other Extremely Windy
That “hot spot” you mention sounds a bit windy, with wind velocities estimated at 6,000 miles per hour(!) I’d need an extra-heavy duty wind shield to report from down there. And at 16 light years away, it could take a while get back.
awesome!
Just saw a great video on youtube. It’s from News in Space, showing the solar system of the possibly habitable planet Gliese 581c.
I haven’t seen the word ‘ken’ in print before.
I believe it is quite commonly used in Scotland, though it is a long time since I actually heard it spoken.
I wonder is it used anywhere else?
George
I had to look it up before I used it! It means “one’s range of knowledge or sight.”
Perfect when talking about new planets …
i just saw that video great link. i believe in (an as yet undisproved theory )that we live in an eternal universe and that in a universe with no beginning and no end, or even for that matter a multiverse, everything you can think of or anyone can think of ,has either happened long ago or is happening or will happen somewhere in the future. in an endless and beginningless universe you have been born an endless amount of times and every existance has played out in an endless number of ways. in fact if time is an illusion it is all happening at the same time…forever over and over. what a great idea. you could possibly even visit some of these other existances in your dreams. theoretical physics and cosmology show us that every day new ideas and possible things are true.or false but it is at least a step in our evolution of thought.hopefully also our evolution of society and intelligence.
1. Sam’s comment is an exteemly interesting one and food for a great deal of thought.
2.The word ‘ken’ as you correctly say means knowledge and it is used for the English word ‘know’in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. I have heard it used very many times.
George
totally on a tangent, but I have been using the word ken since I was a little girl and heard it in The Sound of Music!
Totally unprepared are you
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared are you
Of things beyond your ken
Viviane, yes! I remember that song in the South of Music and that usage of the word “ken.”
When they were little, my daughters and I must have watched that movie about 20 times …
Thank you,
Deborah