Planet at Alpha Centauri found

Dear Jack:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:20:08 AM UTC-7, wrote:
....
I'd like to know why they have just found a
planet at Alpha Centauri, our nearest star,

Not the nearest, just "very near".

when they have been searching the skies for
years and have found 600 or so planets (iirc).
it must've been the first place they looked,
mustn't it? Strikes me as odd.

There are 3 or 4 methods involved, and only recently have they become more accurate.

If the Earth is very near the stellar systems's ecliptic plane, then we have a much better chance of detection (regardless of method).

If the planet is massive, we have another very good chance of detection.

Beyond this, we didn't even know for sure there was a massive object in trojan with the Earth until very recently, and we had no idea Pluto had at least 5 moons until we went out there.

Not really that odd, that you don't know what is what, until you really start looking... then sharpen your tools, and look some more. Who is paying money to know these things, because the instrumentation isn't free, and there is significant time involved in analysis?

David A. Smith

dlzc wrote:
Beyond this, we didn't even know for sure there was a massive object in trojan with
the Earth until very recently, and we had no idea Pluto had at least 5 moons until we
went out there.

Nix, Hydra and "P5" were discovered using Hubble. New Horizons won't
get to Pluto until July 2015.

-- Bill Owen

In sci.astro message 8fa74149-e333-408a-a87c-ef173497a4e0@googlegroups.
com, Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:06:52, dlzc posted:


Beyond this, we didn't even know for sure there was a massive object
in trojan with the Earth until very recently, and we had no idea Pluto
had at least 5 moons until we went out there.

Going part-way out there did not make it possible to find them, except
in so far as the intention of going past there makes it desirable to
look for such. "We" have not yet gone to Pluto, though New Horizons can
no longer avoid the Plutonic region.

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