Canadian-French Hawaii Telescope transit observations show super-earth is probably a mini-neptune
Ray Jay reports from Torino that his group has CFHT observations on GJ 1214b transits, suggesting it has a H/He atmosphere, and is therefore probably not a "super-earth", but more likely an ice giant with neptune like atmosphere.
This is interesting, suggesting indirectly the planet migrated from beyond the ice line and did some gas accretion onto its core before reaching the inner system.
Looking forward to seeing the paper.
More like this
"How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them." -Christiaan Huygens
The "Super-Earth" topical session at the Astrobiology Science Conference wasn't quite the "Woodstock" of astrobio, but it was pretty good.
What do you think of when I say:
"Hey, we just found a Super-Earth"!
Seriously.
We gotsta know.
Final session of ExSSII on Earths, Super-Earths and Habitability
liveblogging:
By the way, did you know that Brooklyn has a space program?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/brooklyn_has_a_space_program…
Well that makes claims for the habitability of planet "d" in the Gliese 581 system somewhat shaky: the planet could be another mini-Neptune. No oceans here, move along!
Interesting, given that there was a claim at DPS last week of data on the same object claiming to rule out a standard H/He
atmosphere...
from Sada et al, or something more recent?
How big does a terrestrial planet have to get before it can start accreting He?