starship-design: Fwd: Re: New 'rebel' planet found

[KellySt@aol.com]

---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj:    Re: New 'rebel' planet found
Date:    96-10-26 16:29:36 EST
From:    Viper7997
To:      kgstar@most.fw.hac.com
To:      starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
To:      MLEN3097@mercury.gc.peachnet.edu
To:      Kelly St,sdudley@ix.netcom.com
To:      schlege@rmc1.crocker.com,JohnFrance
To:      mark_jensen@cpqm.mail.saic.com
To:      DTaylor648

This, as published on Sky and Telescope's Wep Page (http://www.skypub.com),
and can be found on AOL in the Astronomy Club (Keyword:  ASTRONOMY)...

PLANET IN A MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEM

Meanwhile, researchers at McDonald and Lick observatories have independently
discovered a planet orbiting the star 16 Cygni B, which is part of a
triple-star system about 100 light-years from Earth. The teams have not
actually seen the planet itself, but rather the wobbling motion it induces in
the star.  The teams have been monitoring this star system since the late
1980s, and they combined their data for this joint announcement.  No large
planets have been detected yet around the other two stars.  16 Cygni B is
considered a close match to our Sun in brightness and temperature.

The first-ever detection of a planet in a multiple-star system would be
unusual enough, but this planet has some interesting quirks of its own.
 First, it is much less massive than most of the other extrasolar planets
found to date, with a mass that could be as little as 1.6 times that of
Jupiter.  Thus it is probably a true planet rather than a brown dwarf. Also,
it circles the star every 2.2 years in a highly eccentric orbit (e = 0.67),
which means its distance from the star ranges between 84 and 425 million km,
averaging about 250.  How a planet can be so big yet in such an eccentric
orbit is a puzzling challenge to theorists.

Also, there are a few WWW sites about the extrasolar planets:

http://cannon.sfsu.edu/~williams/planetsearch/planetsearch.html
http://www.obspm.fr/departement/darc/planets/encycl.html
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ddgarber/main.htm

(Warning: The last loads REALLY slowly because the guy has WAY too many
graphics on it.)

Stay groovular.  ---Kristin =)