From UCSB & JPL / Caltech
Trans-Atlantic cooperation, particularly between Europeans and sky-gazers in Santa Barbara and Pasadena, has helped provide yet more information about what's out there in the vastness of space. Some 1,500 light years away, for example, scientists say they have found a temperate planet circling a far-off star similar to our Sun. Based on the observations of more than 60 astronomers scattered around the Earth, including in Southern California, the experts say the planet they have sighted is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium with probable masses of rock and water under high pressure -- in short, something akin to what's believed to be like our solar system's planets Jupiter and Saturn. Meantime, a European-led effort to map the relic radiation left after the Big Bang that is believed to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago has produced an image of tendrils of what may be the coldest stuff in the galaxy, a swirling cloud of dust and gases.
Photo: Galactic web of cold dust / ESA, HFI Consortium, IRAS
Global observations lead to finding of far-off, Jupiter-like planet
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