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A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting

bsky.app162 points33 comments
Screenshot of A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting

Commenters reacted with amazement at the 12-year imaging sequence of a star with four planets, praising its visual appeal and value for science communication: tocs3 said such images are what non-professionals mainly get from science, and swiftcoder argued they help convey the "wow" factor. Several brought broader context: turtletontine noted a related galactic-center animation and linked the Sagittarius A* work to the 2020 Nobel Prize, while sixothree and forinti offered historical perspective on how scientific knowledge (plate tectonics, exoplanets, galaxies) has advanced across generations.

The conversation also dug into technical details and diverged on causes and interpretation. 317070 asked about angular separations; turtletontine explained the 20 AU scale bar corresponds to roughly 0.5 arcseconds, and jcims gave estimated orbital distances (about 16, 26, 43, 69 AU) and that the planets are larger than Jupiter, a point ryandrake used to argue that current direct imaging mostly works for very large, wide-orbit planets. Kaxo noticed decreased noise in 2017 and commenters split: ajcp attributed it to stellar brightness changes, rietta to improved processing, and mmooss warned some transient dots around 2016 might be artifacts. A Wikipedia link to HR 8799 was also posted for reference.

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