extrasolar planets

you do realize they are just artist renditions of what extrasolar planets could be like and not actual photos right.

>>7964858
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-7b
>Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created a cloud map of the planet. It is the first cloud map to be created beyond the Solar System.

>>7964863

>literally quoting wikipedia to try and prove a point

You and your ilk are the cancer of this board.

>>7964881

I don't understand. They used the observation data to make a rudimentary map of the planet's clouds, what's so cancerous about me quoting that?

Is that a fallacious claim?

>>7964889
He's just being retarded

>>7964905
>He's just being retarded
I think he's assuming we can't see Kepler 7b because we normally only detect extrasolar planets by observing their effect on the luminosity and wobble of their host star.
I myself was quite surprised to read the Wikipedia article.
Apparently this planet is 1.5 times the radius of Jupiter, with an orbit 1/6 that of Mercury.
But it's over 3000 light years away.
How the FUCK are they seeing it?

>>7965055
I think they measure the dimming of the star it passes in front of

>>7965075
>I think they measure the dimming of the star it passes in front of
That wouldn't explain the "cloud map":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-7b
>Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's Moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere.

>>7965055

>>7965095

Yeah, hence why I'm curious about how they did this and if it's possible to do other planets, or if it's just the unique conditions of the planet that let it work.

we cant even get a "surface map" of the gas giants in our own solar system. There's no fucking way we could get one for a planet that's 9 million km away

>>7965329

Well this one's a cloud map.

>>7965338
its an artist rendition based on limited data and inferences you stupid fucking idiot.

>>7965518

What's the inference'd part? Apart from the colour, but I think it's possible to get that currently.

>>7965111
They most likely took an extremely high quality and large photo of the region in space that surrounds the star, then zoomed in to the star itself, but this star is 3000 light years away, so going by the natural laws of a planets life cycle, it could very well not even be there at this point.

'cloud mapping' is an overly generous way of saying they detected the presence of clouds

We can't fucking see the moon landing sites. The only way we 'see' distant galaxies is because they are billions of kilometers across. Don't fucking try to tell me 'they' can 'see' clouds on kepler. NASA is telling lies, there is no way they can determine that discolorations are actually clouds. Leads me to think kepler telescope has gone offline.

>>7965945
You think a star could completely disappear in 3000 years?

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>>7966017

>>7966042
*planet

>>7966017

Oh, but they have detected clouds before on several planets.

Here's how the so-called "cloud map" was reconstructed:

>"To reach this conclusion, the researchers looked through three years’ worth of Kepler light data, combined with recent thermal observations from the planet, taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Combining both datasets, the researchers compared the amount of light and heat given off by the planet at every phase of its orbit. The planet is tidally locked, presenting the same face to its star at all times. From Earth, the planet appears to wax and wane as it circles its star, much like the phases of our moon.

>“You can reconstruct the information in terms of brightness, slice by slice,” de Wit says. “This is really fantastic, because though the planet is extremely small, there are techniques for getting spatial information about the planet.”"

>>7966527

So it is a map.

>>7966527
>"The researchers analyzed Kepler 7b’s phase curves — measurements of light from the planet at every orbital phase, taken by the Kepler spacecraft. To determine whether these emissions stem from light or heat, the team looked at phase curves in the infrared, provided by Spitzer. They detected very little thermal energy emitted by the planet — a confirmation that most of Kepler 7b’s emissions are indeed reflected light.
But that finding wasn’t a sure indication of clouds on the planet. The group reasoned that the reflected light could instead be caused by a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, in which light from Kepler 7b’s star uniformly scatters around the planet, reflected by atoms or molecules much smaller than those in clouds — much as Earth’s atmospheric gases scatter sunlight, creating a blue sky."
>"To distinguish between the two possibilities, the group looked again at Kepler 7b’s phase curves. If the planet’s reflectivity is due to uniform Rayleigh scattering, its light emissions should peak at the point at which the planet is behind the star, displaying its full dayside to an observer. But instead, the researchers found that the planet’s brightness peaked slightly after it had passed behind the star, indicating that its reflectivity is not uniform — a sign that the reflectivity was due to an uneven distribution of clouds"

Tl;dr the "cloud map" is actually a map of the planet's brightness versus longitude, because at different points in its orbit the light reaching us from the planet is being reflected off of a different angle, and it's tidally locked so rotation isn't a factor. That light is probably reflected because of it's spectral characteristics, the pattern over time suggests it's probably due to a varying distribution of something really reflective, and the most likely really reflective thing that forms uneven distributions is probably cloud cover. If you make that assumption, you can call it a "cloud map"

>>7966533
Yes, but in only one dimension, and they didn't actually have to resolve the planet to anything more than a single pixel to generate it.

>>7966542
>>7966539

I think it's a bit disingenuous to call it an assumption.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.7894

The actual paper seems solid. They've been able to detect clouds on other planets as well.

>>7966549
I'm pointing out that they didn't literally look through their telescope and see fluffy green patches, and thus the claim that they couldn't possibly do that is correct but irrelevant; the construction of a "cloud map" was instead quite clever extrapolation from limited data that could indeed be obtained from 3000 ly away.

>>7966560

That's true. I'm aware it's not an actual photo, and I don't think anyone thought that, but it's still really amazing to me because it makes the distant planet seem more real. I'm fascinated by all these extrasolar worlds and it's kind of tragic I'll never be able to see any. So something like this is nice.

Hence why I made the thread, I'm curious if the process has been replicated anywhere, or if this was a one off. And just in general if anyone here had some cool information or theories about extrasolar worlds I wouldn't be able to find with a google search.

I'm so enthralled.

>>7966048
That was an orbiter not a telescope.

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>>7965111
>>7965055
>>7965075