Astronomers have spotted light reflected off a planet orbiting a distant sun, by teasing it out from the background starlight. The discovery allows direct calculations of the mass and other properties of the exoplanet, rather than inferring them using other methods.
Jorge Martins of the University of Porto in Portugal and his team used the HARPS instrument at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile to study 51 Pegasi b, which was the first ever exoplanet found around a Sun-like star. The team subtracted the starlight, leaving only the faint planetary spectrum. From this, they calculated the planet's mass to be about half that of Jupiter.
Detecting this reflected light from other exoplanets could allow astronomers to determine more characteristics than other techniques can.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Light direct from an alien world. Nature 520, 588 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/520588b
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/520588b
