New planets found!

In another life I was an astronomer -- and in the 1970's the very concept of seeing planets around a star other than the Sun would have seemed absurd. Well, a Canadian has proven that absurdity to be a reality. KUDOS to Christian Marois, a Canadian we can all be proud of!

(On the right is a picture of the star and three planets)

New planet system found

This July, Christian Marois, a young astrophysicist with Canada's National Research Council, was on a plane over the Pacific poring over telescopic images of the star HR 8799 – an unremarkable pinprick in the Pegasus constellation – when things suddenly fell into focus.

"I thought `This is crazy, this is amazing,'" the 34-year-old research associate says. "I discovered there was, not one, but two objects around this star."

And for the first time in the history of creation, a creature on a planet in our solar system was looking at an image of planets orbiting in another. The discovery was released yesterday in the journal Science.

"It was the first image of another planet system orbiting another star," says Marois, who is completing a post-doctoral stint at the council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria.
"I've been dreaming about astronomy since my childhood ... so this was a childhood dream come true."

His dream would capture three planets as it turned out.

Circling HR 8799, 128 light-years (that's 128 x 9.5 trillion kilometres) from Earth, the planetary trio is between seven and 10 times the mass of Jupiter.