Galaxias, Via Lactea, or Milky Way, where our Earth lied, still a wilderness that has not been revealed by the human's sophistication knowledge today. Not to all the mysteries unfold.
US space agency (National Aeronautics and Space Administration/NASA) has recently discovered the gas planet lied on 13,000 light-years away from Earth. The findings obtained using the Spitzer Space Telescope are used in conjunction with ground-based telescopes, the Poland-based Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) in Chile.
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| This map of our Milky Way Galaxy shows the location of the gas giant OGLE-2014-BLG-0124Lb and other exoplanets discovered with microlensing. (Picture from: http://bit.ly/1J5rJnB) |
One light year is equal to 9,460 billion kilometers. With a distance of 13,000 light-years away, the finding became one of the farthest known planets. These findings indicate that Spitzer, from its location in space, can be used to help uncover the puzzle of how the planets spread throughout the Milky Way's spiral shape is flat. Are the planets are concentrated at its center? Or equal to the rim?
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| This artist’s conception shows OGLE-2014-BLG-0124Lb. (Picture from: http://bit.ly/1J5rJnB) |
Spitzer is at a distance of 207 million kilometers away from the our Earth. "We do not know if the planets are more likely to be in the galactic bulge or on the dial. That's why such observations it becomes very important," said Jennifer Yee, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as quoted from the Spitzer Space Telescope site on Wednesday, April 16, 2015.
Warsaw OGLE Telescope located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, scanning the sky with a method called microlensing - events that occur when a star passes in front of the other. If the foreground star happens to have planets in orbit around it, the planet could be a trigger point (blip) in the radar screen monitors.
Astronomers using the blip to find and perform the planet characteristics within tens of thousands of light years in the galaxy bulge - where star crossed more often. Meanwhile, the sun is shining on the Earth is on the outskirts of the galaxy. Microlensing technique has so far resulted in 30 findings of the planet. The farthest within 25,000 light years.
"Such experiments have detected the planets around the Sun to which is almost in the center of the Milky Way," said another study author, Andrew Gould of The Ohio State University, Columbus. Microlensing equip more than 1,000 near-Earth planets that have been discovered by the NASA's Kepler mission. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | SCI-NEWS.COM]
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