NASA to Make Major Extrasolar Planet Announcement

“A major discovery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope about a planet outside our Solar System will be announced in a Space Science Update at 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 27. The discovery marks an important new capability in efforts to uncover secrets about these newly discovered extrasolar planets.”

Editor’s note: given the names of the individuals listed as speakers at this event, plus previous press releases and published papers, it is likely that the topic of discussion will focus upon planet(s) circling the sunlike star HD 209458.

“We have observed 4 transits of the planet of HD 209458 using the STIS spectrograph on HST. The low-mass companion to HD 209458 is the first extrasolar planet found to transit the disk
of its parent star. The primary star (G0 V, V = 7:64, B-V = 0:58) lies at at distance of 47
pc as determined by Hipparcos. An analysis of radial velocity measurements gave an orbital period of 3.524 days, with M_p sin i = 0:69 ± 0:05 M_Jup and
a = 0:0468 AU, using the derived value of 1:1 ± 0:1 M _sol for the stellar mass. When combined with the
early photometric light curve data, the same analysis yielded an orbital inclination i = 86:1°± 1:6°,
and a planetary radius R_p = 1:40 ± 0:17 R_Jup.”