Figure 1. Discovery image of 51 Eri b with the Gemini Planet Imager
taken in the near-infrared light on December 18, 2014. The bright
central star has been mostly removed by a hardware and software mask to
enable the detection
of the exoplanet one million times fainter. Credits: J. Rameau (UdeM) and C. Marois (NRC Herzberg). Full Resolution JPEG
Figure 2. An artistic conception of the Jupiter-like exoplanet, 51 Eri
b, seen in the near-infrared light that shows the hot layers deep in its
atmosphere glowing through clouds. Because of its young age, this young
cousin of our own Jupiter is still hot and carries information on the
way it was formed 20 million years ago. Credits: Danielle Futselaar & Franck Marchis, SETI Institute. Full Resolution JPEG
The Gemini Planet Imager utilizes an integral field spectrograph, an instrument capable of taking images at multiple wavelengths – or colors – of infrared light simultaneously, in order to search for young self-luminous planets around nearby stars. The left side of the animation shows the GPI images of the nearby star 51 Eridani in order of increasing wavelength from 1.5 to 1.8 microns. The images have been processed to suppress the light from 51 Eridani, revealing the exoplanet 51 Eridani b (indicated) which is approximately a million times fainter than the parent star. The bright regions to the left and right of the masked star are artifacts from the image processing algorithm, and can be distinguished from real astrophysical signals based on their brightness and position as a function of wavelength. The spectrum of 51 Eridani b, on the right side of the animation, shows how the brightness of the planet varies as a function of wavelength. If the atmosphere was entirely transmissive, the brightness would be approximately constant as a function of wavelength. This is not the case for 51 Eridani b, the atmosphere of which contains both water (H2O) and methane (CH4). Over the spectral range of this GPI dataset, water absorbs photons between 1.5 and 1.6 microns, and methane absorbs between 1.6 and 1.8 microns. This leads to a strong peak in the brightness of the exoplanet at 1.6 microns, the wavelength at which absorption by both water and methane is weakest.Robert De Rosa (UC Berkeley), Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg, University of Victoria).
Gemini-Discovered world is most like Jupiter
The simulated fly-by of the 51 Eridani star and planet system begins with the view of the
sky showing the location of the star near the constellation Orion visible in the northern hemisphere winter.
The young star 51 Eridani is 100 light-years from the Sun and a Jupiter-like planet is
directly imaged in the infrared in an orbit similar in size to the Sun-Saturn distance.
The star also has indirect evidence of belts of rocky debris orbiting closer and farther
to the the star than the new planet. The fly-by ends with a view back toward the Sun from
the newly discovered planet. Credits: J. Patience & J. Cornelison (ASU). Fly-by video in AVI (600MB)
Going beyond the discovery and imaging of a young Jupiter, astronomers using the Gemini Observatory's new Planet Imager (GPI) have probed a newly discovered world in unprecedented detail. What they found is a planet about two times the mass of Jupiter, and the most Solar System-like planet ever directly imaged around another star.
The planet, known as 51 Eridani b, orbits its host star at about 13 times the Earth-Sun distance (equivalent to being between Saturn and Uranus in our Solar System). The system is located about 100 light years away. The Gemini data also provide scientists with the strongest-ever spectroscopic detection of methane in the atmosphere of a planet outside of our Solar System, adding to its similarities to giant planets in our Solar System.
"Many of the exoplanets astronomers have imaged before have atmospheres that look like very cool stars" said Bruce Macintosh, of Stanford University who led the construction of GPI and now leads the planet-hunting survey. "This one looks like a planet."
The research is published in the August 13, 2015 issue of the journal Science.
"This superb result is a clear demonstration of the remarkable imaging and spectroscopic capabilities of GPI," said Chris Davis, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy Division program officer who oversees Gemini Observatory funding. "The exoplanet surveys now possible with Gemini will undoubtedly lead to a far better understanding of the numbers of gas giants orbiting neighboring stars, the characteristics of their atmospheres, and ultimately the way in which giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn are formed."
The discovery is part of the team's broader effort to find and characterize new planets called the GPI Exoplanet Survey (GPIES). The survey expects to explore over 600 stars that could host planetary systems; so far they've looked at almost a hundred stars. "This is exactly the kind of system we envisioned discovering when we designed GPI", says James Graham, professor at UC Berkeley and Project Scientist for GPI.
"GPI is capable of dissecting the light of exoplanets in unprecedented detail so we can now characterize other worlds like never before," says Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). Marois, one of almost 90 researchers on the team, pioneered many of the observation strategies and data reduction techniques that played a critical role in the detection and analysis of the new planet. The light from the planet is very faint – a million times fainter than the star – but GPI can see it clearly. "The planet is so faint and located so close to its star, that it is also the first directly imaged exoplanet to be fully consistent with Solar System-like planet formation models," adds Marois.
The Gemini observations were also followed up by the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii to verify the discovery.
GPI Instrument Scientist, Fredrik Rantakyro, added, "Since I was a child, I dreamed about planets around other stars and the possible lives that could be out there. As an astronomer, it's common to work with state-of-the-art telescopes but not to make your heart beat faster. This is exactly what happened with this dream-come-true discovery of this brother to Jupiter!"
51 Eridani is young – only 20 million years old – and this is exactly what made the direct detection of the planet possible. When planets coalesce, material falling into the planet releases energy and heats it up. Over the next hundred million years they radiate that energy away, mostly as infrared light, and gradually cool.
In addition to being what is likely the lowest-mass planet ever imaged, its atmosphere is also very cool – 430 degrees C (800 degrees Fahrenheit). It also features the strongest spectroscopic atmospheric methane signal, similar to the heavy methane dominated atmospheres of the gas giant planets in our Solar System.
GPI Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) is currently less than 20% through the 600 targets slated for observations during the 3-year campaign. The targets were selected because of their youth and relatively close proximity to our Solar System (within about 300 light years). The results of this survey will be remarkable, as it is probing a regime of exoplanet mass and separation that have never been properly surveyed before. It is expected to provide the first detailed census and demography of gas giant exoplanets, to find several multi-planet systems, and to perform detailed spectral characterization of many new exoplanets.
GPI was made possible with funding by the US National Science Foundation and Gemini partnership to support the work of an international team from the US and Canada. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory constructed GPI's adaptive optics system and worked to match it to the Gemini telescope. Engineers with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) designed and built GPI's optical-mechanical structure, and wrote the top level and mechanical control software. UCLA produced GPI's infrared spectrograph. The American Museum of Natural History developed starlight-blocking masks. JPL was responsible for a precision wavefront sensor. University of Montreal, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and other members of the GPI team produced the data analysis software.
Media Contact:
Peter Michaud Public Information and Outreach Manager
Gemini Observatory, Hilo, HI
Email: pmichaud@gemini.edu
Cell: (808) 936-6643
Desk: (808) 974-2510
Antonieta Garcia
Gemini Observatory, La Serena, Chile
Email: agarcia@gemini.edu
Cell: 9 - 69198294
Desk: +56 (51) 205628
Science Contacts:
Bruce Macintosh
Department of Physics, Stanford University
Email: bmacintosh@stanford.edu
Desk: (650) 725-4116
Franck Marchis
SETI Institute
Email: fmarchis@seti.edu
Desk: (650) 960-4236
Fredrik Rantakyro
Gemini Observatory, La Serena, Chile
Email: frantaky@gemini.edu
Cell: 9 - 995097802
Desk: 56-51- 2205665
Source: Gemini Observatory
