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Hubble Planet Transits

By catdynamics on October 6, 2006.

The SWEEPS survey of distant stars in the galactic bulge has finally announced their findings.
They found 16 transiting "hot Jupiters" with the Advanced Camera for Surveys synoptic imaging of a field towards the center of the Milky Way.

Five of the planets are ultra short period (day or less) and likely to be Very Hot.
Possibly ablating, and puffy. This is a puzzle in some ways.

Number of planets found is consistent with that expected from local population, so going further out
(10-20,000 light years in this field) we keep seeing that sub-population of hot massive planets.
So planets are ubiqutous.

This is interesting stuff. Here is the actual article in Nature (subscription).
There have been repeated rumours that they were sitting on some results, and I guess they waited to publish until they had verification.

Nice result

Tags
astro

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