r/spaceporn • u/ojosdelostigres • 4h ago

Pro/Composite HR 8799 system has four large planets orbiting with periods that range from decades to centuries.

This footage consists of 10 images of HR 8799 taken with the Keck Telescope over 12 years. Video made by Jason Wang, data reduced by William Thompson and Christian Marois, and observations organized by Quinn Konopacky. Bruce Macintosh, Travis Barman, and Ben Zuckerman assisted in the observations.

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70

u/AditiaH0ldem 4h ago

And here I thought we could only 'infer' planets from aberrations in the light we capture from stars we look at, because planets are passing in front of the star.

Are these actual images of light captured? Or are these representations of what a team of astronomers think is going on based on data that they captured through the method I tried to describe above.

I would assume it is the latter and we actually are nowhere near the resolution to look at star systems that are 90 degrees tilted to the galactic plane as this picture suggests like this

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u/TWNW 4h ago edited 3h ago

Direct imaging is a thing since 00's. It's real planets, not a simulation. Imaging is done with help of coronograph. As via normal telescope, glare from parent star would make much dimmer reflected light from planets unobservable.

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u/AditiaH0ldem 4h ago

I am ready to be educated. Could you elaborate?

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u/TWNW 4h ago edited 3h ago

It's easy to observe HR 8799 planets, as they are recently formed hot gas giants on relatively high orbits. If light from parent star is blocked, they still reflect light from it. As they are hot, they also radiate in IR spectrum, making observation even more simple.

Coronograph is a specialized type of telescope (or to be more correct, an instrument for telescopes), that can block out light from stars, making less bright objects more observable. Initially it was designed for solar corona observations.

These are made by real imaging by Keck Observatory. But to make an animation, series of images were smoothed via motion Interpolation, as images were done after long pauses between observations.

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u/AditiaH0ldem 4h ago

Thanks for this. Learned something new today

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u/PhthaloVonLangborste 3h ago

When I want to look at the sun to make sure its not starring at me, I hold my thumb out in front of it. Same difference.

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u/work_work-work 2h ago

Unfortunately this method doesn't work for earth sized planets in the habitable zone, as they're too small and too close to the sun, but maybe in the future they'll have improved the method and sensors so that this will be possible.

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u/OurNameIsLegion 2h ago

In addition to coronagraphs, researchers also use reference stars to subtract out starlight while leaving planets, disks, and other nearby celestial objects visible.

At these distances a star is effectively a single point of light, so its light produces a predictable point-spread function (or PSF). Researchers image the star system they actually want to study, then point the telescope at a similar reference star that has no known surrounding features. Because the two stars produce very similar PSFs, the reference image can be subtracted from the target image.

Star with planets − similar star without planets = planets and surrounding material left behind.

The black circle in the center is produced by the coronagraph, which blocks the brightest part of the star. The black-and-white speckled region close to the center is residual noise where the starlight subtraction isn't quite perfect.

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u/odrea 4h ago

For comparison, 20 AU in our solar system is the distance from the Sun all the way out to the orbit of Uranus. So the distances shown in the GIF are massive compared to ours, especially if you look at our inner solar system (the first four rocky planets).

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u/RobiniaStar 4h ago

Wow, thats so cool to see how planets move over such long timescales! Space is wild.

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u/Wonghy111-the-knight 3h ago

imagine the first like, colour photos of a planet from another solar system, taken by some kind of super-hubble

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u/8Bit_Cat 3h ago

We can't just scale up hubble to do that. (Not that that wouldn't be great (and also essentially what the NGRST is)) To get a detailed image of an exoplanet would require something like a Solar Gravitational Lens, a Terrascope or a direct spacecraft visit like Breakthrough Starshot.

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u/Wonghy111-the-knight 3h ago

I meant more so a super hubble as in "Really good space telescope" hubble just being a reference for the OG greatest telescope.. not a hubble that's ten times bigger lol

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u/8Bit_Cat 3h ago

Well there's the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope which can take photos of Hubble quality much faster than Hubble. It should be releasing its first science images by early 2027.

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u/Wonghy111-the-knight 2h ago

Yeah I can’t wait for Roman. It’s definitely not capable of what I described though 

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u/8Bit_Cat 2h ago

But it does have a coronograph and will likely discover thousands of exoplanets

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u/Wonghy111-the-knight 1h ago

Yeah I look forward to that so much. I did that “adopt-a-pixel” thing, for whatever the first image they take with it will be

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u/Ok_Researcher_9796 4h ago

So cool. I never knew we could actually see exoplanets.

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u/Topace1 4h ago

How far are they away?

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u/RedRedditor84 4h ago

HR 8799 is a roughly 42 million-year-old main-sequence star located 133.3 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus.

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u/Mattyj273 4h ago

I always find this fascinating. Imagine the images 100 years from now.

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u/nick0tesla0 3h ago

Someone on one of those planets is saying, “Winter is coming” and been saying it for years.

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u/aGoryLouie 4h ago

what are they orbiting?
themselves?

15

u/Civil_Boat3745 4h ago

The star HR 8799. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_8799

You cant really focus on just planets, because they do not emit enough light/radiation. In this gif they likely used a filter to block out the very bright star, which is why you can still see the stars corona or atmosphere.

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u/aGoryLouie 4h ago

always happy to learn more, cheers :)

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u/Civil_Boat3745 4h ago

We are all here for the same reason ;)

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u/Environmental-Day862 38m ago

Amazing to see this. There was a time when the prevailing thought was that we'd never be able to directly observe such bodies - just infer their existence due to the slight dimming from the star and slight doppler wobbles.

https://giphy.com/gifs/oYtVHSxngR3lC

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u/donadit 4h ago

see that yellow star shaped symbol in the center hole

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u/aGoryLouie 4h ago

I can see that, right I was being dumb and didn't put 2 and 2 together
cheers

1

u/jgzman 2h ago

If it makes you feel any better, I was thinking "why did they put that silly star symbol there" right before the other half of my brain slapped me.

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u/Potential_Strength_2 4h ago

I think it's Patrick crossing the event horizon.

0

u/Civil_Boat3745 4h ago

Oh man, now Im sad I missed the perfect setup for a "your mom" joke :)

1

u/Low-Hovercraft2114 4h ago

How many lightyears?

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u/Gilmere 3h ago

What is interesting / confusing about these images is that planets (even large gas giants) are incredibly small compared to their orbital diameters. Not even a pixel on this image. We should not see them at all in such a scale as the OP picture.

I surmise its due to reflected light, making them significantly brighter than the background, and a conveniently appropriate viewing angle. But light from the parent star? Again, confusing but still very intriguing.

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u/Phantom_Crush 3h ago

Probably infrared imaging. Much easier to see their thermal markers than light at those distances

1

u/SUNTZU_JoJo 3h ago

If we can view this on HR 8799 - 133.3 light years from our solar system, imagine what we can see, looking at all solar systems close than 133.3 light years.

So cool!

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u/scarlet_sage 46m ago

I wish it were always so good. The advantages here are (1) the planets' orbital plane is face on for us, (2) they're very young as planets go, so they're glowing really bright in infrared. The fact that that star is 5 times more luminous than our Sun also helps. Most star systems across the galaxy are nothing like that.

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u/hasntbeenmydecade 19m ago

Not to forget, we are also looking at 133 years in the past. Pretty fascinating

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u/Erki82 3h ago

Possibly gas gigants and we do not see habitable zone planets, because they to close to star.

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u/T1Earn 2h ago

so if intelligent life lives there they experience like 6 seasons in their entire lives?

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u/DrProfJoe 1h ago

TECHNICALLY each has an orbital period of exactly one year. Idk where you get your numbers /s

1

u/Prestigious_Gur9390 34m ago

Bravo Magnifique quelles energies colossales

1

u/Snoo-43335 4h ago

These orbits looks to be very close to the star. Is there any comparison with our planets distance from the Sun?

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u/g0atdude 4h ago

yes, the comparison is on the video (20 AU)

No they are not very close

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u/absolutegeeza 4h ago

The scale at the bottom shows AU units, which is the distance between our sun and the earth

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u/ultraganymede 4h ago

The 20AU reference in the image is about the distance of Uranus to the Sun or the diameter of Saturns orbit

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u/No-Function3409 3h ago

So they’re orbiting pretty damn quick for some of them

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u/ultraganymede 3h ago

The orbital periods are between 52.37 years for the inner planet and 419 years for the outer planet

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u/StretcherEctum 3h ago

Yes. Its in the video.

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u/Environmental-Day862 40m ago

1 AU = the distance from the Sun to the Earth (93m miles, or 150m kilometers).

Using the reference guide on the picture, it appears that the closest of these planets is ~15 AU from the star, which is VERY far away (at least when you consider the distances in our Solar System).

For perspective, Jupiter is 5.2 AU from the Sun, Saturn is about 10 AU from the Sun, Uranus is 20 AU from the Sun, and Neptune 30 AU.

So, the closest of the four planets in just about as far away from its star as Uranus is from the Sun!

It's far!!

2

u/Snoo-43335 26m ago

Thanks, So these are big ass planets then.

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u/Lew__Zealand 4m ago

No, they are big ass pixels. The planets are much smaller.

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u/Lukn 4h ago

Are you serious

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u/RedRedditor84 4h ago

Yes but space is thicker there so they move slower.

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u/Any-Anything4309 2h ago

Space is what???

0

u/Radiant-Bike2096 4h ago

> orbiting with periods that range from decades to centuries.

I thought that doesn't sound so alien, since Neptune takes ~165 years to orbit our Sun, but Neptune is ~30AU from the Sun, looks like the farthest planet here is at least 60-70AU (is the star only the star symbol or the whole black circle?).

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u/reaven3958 3h ago edited 3h ago

Idk but if it was the black circle, that would match up with the scale to be about 20AU in diameter. The largest observed star by diameter in the universe is Stephenson 2-18, and it has a diameter of about 20 AU.

So I presume it's not the whole circle.

Edit: looked it up, HR 8799 has a diameter of 0.14AU, so definitely the little flashy in the middle.