APOD for 2009 June 3 was an artist's impression of a planet VB10 orbiting Van Biesbroeck's star. The planet is likely to be comparable in size to its parent star. The discussion also mentioned the possibility of planets that are larger than their parent stars.
This is an intriguing possibility. If such a planet exists, and we are in the orbital plane, we would see the planet blocking almost all the light from the star. Do such variable stars exist?
Planets bigger than their stars
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
BDM,
Observing transits is one of the ways exoplanets are detected. The light variations usually are quite small, though. I don't recall any announcements about significant eclipses.
Observing transits is one of the ways exoplanets are detected. The light variations usually are quite small, though. I don't recall any announcements about significant eclipses.
Selden
-
chris
- Site Admin
- Posts: 4211
- Joined: 28.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 4 months
- Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
Since VB 10 b was detected astrometrically, there's little chance that it's orbital plane is aligned with the line of sight from Earth. The planet's gravity produces the largest apparent perturbations on the star's position when the line of sight is perpendicular to the orbital plane. This is in contrast to the radial velocity method, which works best when the light of sight is nearly parallel to the orbital plane. So, planets detected via the radial velocity method are much more likely to transit than astrometric planets.
--Chris
--Chris
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
There are already the examples of the pulsar planets... neutron stars are tiny, so even a terrestrial planet would dwarf the star.
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
This is true. However, planets around main-sequence stars are more interesting.ajtribick wrote:There are already the examples of the pulsar planets... neutron stars are tiny, so even a terrestrial planet would dwarf the star.
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
Why?However, planets around main-sequence stars are more interesting.
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
Different people have different interests 
( Personally, I'm annoyed when planetary candidates get removed from the list without saying *why* they were removed. Was it because the data were poor and could not be confirmed, or because they turned out to be brown dwarfs? )
( Personally, I'm annoyed when planetary candidates get removed from the list without saying *why* they were removed. Was it because the data were poor and could not be confirmed, or because they turned out to be brown dwarfs? )
Selden
-
PlutonianEmpire
- Posts: 1374
- Joined: 09.09.2004
- Age: 39
- With us: 19 years 9 months
- Location: MinneSNOWta
- Contact:
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
If this turns out to be real, then Celestia's way of lighting up planets couldn't be more true. 
Terraformed Pluto: Now with New Horizons maps! :D
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
Because we live on one, of course.ajtribick wrote:Why?However, planets around main-sequence stars are more interesting.
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
On the other hand, we could not live on ANY of the planets we have found around main sequence stars either, even if we could get to them in the first place. None of them are particularly promising as candidates to host alien life either.
-
eburacum45
- Posts: 691
- Joined: 13.11.2003
- With us: 20 years 7 months
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
That artist's impression is very similar to the sort of quality you can get using Celestia nowadays. With a bit of post processing and the use of large enough textures I think it would be fairly easy to make an image like that.
Re: Planets bigger than their stars
eburacum45 wrote:That artist's impression is very similar to the sort of quality you can get using Celestia nowadays. With a bit of post processing and the use of large enough textures I think it would be fairly easy to make an image like that.
Umm, i really dont know, celestia has a narrow options for graphics but on the otherhand that artistic impression isnt very challenging to do.