{"id":17738,"date":"2020-04-20T23:17:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T15:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/astronomers-offer-a-solution-to-hubble-space-telescopes-case-of-the-disappearing-planet\/"},"modified":"2020-04-20T23:17:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T15:17:37","slug":"astronomers-offer-a-solution-to-hubble-space-telescopes-case-of-the-disappearing-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/astronomers-offer-a-solution-to-hubble-space-telescopes-case-of-the-disappearing-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers offer a solution to Hubble Space Telescope\u2019s case of the disappearing planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Hubblecast 127 Light: The Mysteries of Fomalhaut b\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/P1ZM3bMw70Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>More than a decade ago, Fomalhaut b was considered one of the first exoplanets to be directly imaged \u2014 but now it\u2019s vanished, and scientists suspect it was actually nothing more than a huge cloud of dust created by a cosmic smashup.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The disappearing act in the Fomalhaut star system, 25 light years away in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, was chronicled by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2004 and 2014. In 2004, the object known as Fomalhaut b was a bright spot in the dusty disk surrounding the star, but by 2014, its brightness had faded to below Hubble\u2019s observational limit.<\/li>\n<li>For a while, scientists referred to Fomalhaut b half-jokingly as a \u201czombie planet\u201d because they expected it to rise from the grave. But today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, astronomers declare Fomalhaut b to be really most sincerely dead.<\/li>\n<li>They say the best explanation for the Hubble observations starts with a collision between two 125-mile-wide planetesimals. The result would be an expanding cloud of dust that eventually widened to span the size of Earth\u2019s orbit around the sun \u2014 and dimmed as it did so. \u201cThis is a blueprint of how planets destroy each other,\u201d the University of Arizona\u2019s George Rieke said today in a news release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Rieke and Andras Gaspar of the University of Arizona\u2019s Steward Observatory are co-authors of the study in PNAS, titled \u201cNew HST Data and Modeling Reveal a Massive Planetesimal Collision Around Fomalhaut.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than a decade ago, Fomalhaut b was considered one of the first exoplanets to be directly imaged \u2014 but now it\u2019s vanished, and scientists suspect it was actually nothing more than a huge cloud of dust created by a cosmic smashup. The disappearing act in the Fomalhaut star system, 25 light years away in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[559,4259,898,4709],"class_list":["post-17738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-exoplanets","tag-hubble","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-planets"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}