Whipple helps figure out size of new planet

By looking at stars billions of miles away, astronomers can sometimes find planets moving in front of them in orbit.

And a telescope at the Whipple Observatory at Mount Hopkins helped measure the size of the newest such planet, TrES-4. the largest-known planet outside the solar system.

TrES-4 is 20 times the diameter of Earth and 1.7 times the diameter of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

So far 20 such transiting planet have been discovered. Transiting planets pass directly in front of its host star as seen from earth.

TrES-40 is about 1,435 light years from earth. A light year is the distance light, moving at about 187,000 miles a second, travels in a year.

Telescopes at the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Palomar Observatory in San Diego, and Spain’s Canary Islands discovered the planet.

Lead scientist Georgi Mandushev at Lowell said there’s probably no firm surface anywhere on the planet. “You would sink into it,” he said.

Scientists at Caltech, Harvard and the W.M. Keck Observatory confirmed the discovery.

Planet TrES-4 makes a complete revolution around its parent star every 3.55 days so a year there is shorter than a week.

The planet is about 434,000 miles from its sun, GSC02620-00648, and consequently is very hot., an estimated 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

An announcement by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii said small telescopes are automated to take exposures on an area of skies as many times is possible during a two-month period.

The data is run through software that corrects for distortion and “noise,” extraneous information.

The astronomers used the 0.8-meter telescope at Lowell, a 1.2-meter telescope at Whipple and a large 10-member telescope at the Keck to measure the newly discovered planet.

Scientists think there may be another planet in the constellation where TrES-4 is located.

Said Mandushev, “It’s tough. We’re not really sure what’s going on there.

“There might actually be another planet in this field, which would be incredible.”

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