Exoplanet and super-earth GJ 1214b in Oph

Dear group,

Last night I went after the rather difficult exoplanet transit GJ
1214b in Oph. The transit depth is quite manageable at around 17 mmag
but the host star has a visual magnitude of 14.67 and which is
slightly brighter in the red (and infrared) as noted by its sizeable B-
V index.

I had some sporadic clouds both at the start and the end of my session
but the result came out much better than I had expected given the very
dim magnitude of the host star.

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photomet...4-20100629.htm

GJ 1214b is one of only two confirmed super-earths (the other being
CoRoT-7b) and with a mass of 6.55 that of earth. Studies suggest that
up to 75% of the planet may be water.

There is no question I will be trying this one again under better
circumstances and especially now that I have a baseline result.
Unfortunately, I must wait for April/2011 when GJ1214 will be
favourably placed while a transit is in place.

Tomorrow we enter July and the weather for some reason has yet to
settle down!

Anthony.

On 6/30/10 8:35 AM, Anthony Ayiomamitis wrote:
Dear group,

Last night I went after the rather difficult exoplanet transit GJ
1214b in Oph. The transit depth is quite manageable at around 17 mmag
but the host star has a visual magnitude of 14.67 and which is
slightly brighter in the red (and infrared) as noted by its sizeable B-
V index.

I had some sporadic clouds both at the start and the end of my session
but the result came out much better than I had expected given the very
dim magnitude of the host star.

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photomet...4-20100629.htm

GJ 1214b is one of only two confirmed super-earths (the other being
CoRoT-7b) and with a mass of 6.55 that of earth. Studies suggest that
up to 75% of the planet may be water.

There is no question I will be trying this one again under better
circumstances and especially now that I have a baseline result.
Unfortunately, I must wait for April/2011 when GJ1214 will be
favourably placed while a transit is in place.

Tomorrow we enter July and the weather for some reason has yet to
settle down!

Anthony.

Anthony, it is amazing how you work around the weather. This
is good stuff. Thanks to you, by sharing your efforts with us,
we are yet even more connected to the cosmos!

Thank You!

On 6/30/10 8:35 AM, Anthony Ayiomamitis wrote:
Dear group,

Last night I went after the rather difficult exoplanet transit GJ
1214b in Oph. The transit depth is quite manageable at around 17 mmag
but the host star has a visual magnitude of 14.67 and which is
slightly brighter in the red (and infrared) as noted by its sizeable B-
V index.

I had some sporadic clouds both at the start and the end of my session
but the result came out much better than I had expected given the very
dim magnitude of the host star.

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photomet...4-20100629.htm

GJ 1214b is one of only two confirmed super-earths (the other being
CoRoT-7b) and with a mass of 6.55 that of earth. Studies suggest that
up to 75% of the planet may be water.

There is no question I will be trying this one again under better
circumstances and especially now that I have a baseline result.
Unfortunately, I must wait for April/2011 when GJ1214 will be
favourably placed while a transit is in place.

Tomorrow we enter July and the weather for some reason has yet to
settle down!

Anthony.

Anthony, it is amazing how you work around the weather. This
is good stuff. Thanks to you, by sharing your efforts with us,
we are yet even more connected to the cosmos!

Thank You!

On Jun 30, 6:35*am, Anthony Ayiomamitis wrote:
Dear group,

Last night I went after the rather difficult exoplanet transit GJ
1214b in Oph. The transit depth is quite manageable at around 17 mmag
but the host star has a visual magnitude of 14.67 and which is
slightly brighter in the red (and infrared) as noted by its sizeable B-
V index.

I had some sporadic clouds both at the start and the end of my session
but the result came out much better than I had expected given the very
dim magnitude of the host star.

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photomet...4-20100629.htm

GJ 1214b is one of only two confirmed super-earths (the other being
CoRoT-7b) and with a mass of 6.55 that of earth. Studies suggest that
up to 75% of the planet may be water.

There is no question I will be trying this one again under better
circumstances and especially now that I have a baseline result.
Unfortunately, I must wait for April/2011 when GJ1214 will be
favourably placed while a transit is in place.

Tomorrow we enter July and the weather for some reason has yet to
settle down!

Anthony.

Here’s where we’re talking about obtaining a serious exoplanet image,
as well as 25 mm resolution of our physically dark but otherwise
unusually naked and thus unavoidably UV reactive mineral saturated
moon (meaning colorful), using the world’s largest single-piece
telescope mirror.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ed-100629.html
at 500 ly and the substantial exoplanet target diameter of perhaps
200,000 km (supposedly 1/6th that of it’s star) using up 10 pixels is
about as good as it gets. However, they could have easily masked off
their imager with a narrow bandpass hydrogen filter and given us some
photosphere details, rather than such a ungodly blob of over-saturated
pixels, or simply kept those pixels of that star unloaded or
suppressed for as long as it takes while they record that seriously
massive exoplanet of 8 Mj.

This Gemini Observatory resolution actually comes out to a resolution
of our moon at roughly 10 mm/pixel, but I rounded that up to the inch
or 25.4 mm/pixel just to be on the conservative side. Plus there’s a
multitude of other benefits for imaging details of our physically dark
moon that has such collections of UV reactive minerals to record
(hardly anything monochromatic)
http://deepskycolors.com/pics/astro/..._MoonColor.jpg
http://www.astrosurf.com/re/moon_20080322_RCOS10.jpg

This one is not actually false colored, so much as it is merely having
extremely boosted those actual colors as triggered by the visible and
those unavoidable UV spectrums of secondary/recoil photons.
http://www.solarviews.com/browse/moon/moonfls1.jpg

As you can see that various independent methods essentially came up
with the same colorful results without their having to artificially
color anything..
http://www.rc-astro.com/photo/id1018.html

Each color represents a specific type of element or mineral, plus
according to some there’s even loads of raw ice that’s hidden in polar
craters, plus otherwise teratonnes of water trapped within that
sucker. Too bad we still can't go there.

~ BG

Question of the day; Is the Gemini Observatory farsighted?
(apparently most public funded observatories are extremely farsighted,
and there are very few observatories without some form of public
funding or same as cash tax credits)

On Jun 30, 7:20*pm, Brad Guth wrote:

Question of the day; *Is the Gemini Observatory farsighted?

Yes, it _is_, at least for the purposes you're thinking of.

While the Moon is effectively at "infinity" for any Earth-bound
optical systems of any size that exists in practice, since the Moon's
surface is brightly illuminated, using "artificial stars" for adaptive
optics is not helpful for examining the Moon's surface (unless you
just look at the area around the terminator, perhaps); thus, the
techniques that allow these large telescopes to have more spatial
resolution than about a 17" telescope (the limit imposed by Earth's
turbulent atmosphere) don't work well for the moon.

John Savard

On Jun 30, 7:33*pm, Quadibloc wrote:
On Jun 30, 7:20*pm, Brad Guth wrote:

Question of the day; *Is the Gemini Observatory farsighted?

Yes, it _is_, at least for the purposes you're thinking of.

While the Moon is effectively at "infinity" for any Earth-bound
optical systems of any size that exists in practice, since the Moon's
surface is brightly illuminated, using "artificial stars" for adaptive
optics is not helpful for examining the Moon's surface (unless you
just look at the area around the terminator, perhaps); thus, the
techniques that allow these large telescopes to have more spatial
resolution than about a 17" telescope (the limit imposed by Earth's
turbulent atmosphere) don't work well for the moon.

John Savard

The physically dark moon/Selene by way of earthshine or better yet
starshine is not brightly illuminated, and that terminator would
obviously be best for imaging details under most applications unless
more of the same old monochromatic 2D imaging is all that you're
after.

Narrow bandpass filters of deep red, blue, green, yellow and possibly
violet would make the already terrific dynamic range way better yet.

~ BG