Date: 04 Oct 2006 13:30:10
From: INBOX ASTRONOMY: NEWS ALERT
Subject: HUBBLE FINDS EXTRASOLAR PLANETS FAR ACROSS OUR GALAXY (STScI-PR06-34)
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EMBARGOED UNTIL 1:00 PM (EDT) OBER 4, 2006
Erica Hupp/Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202-358-1237/1726)
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
(Phone: 410-338-4514; E-mail: villard@stsci.edu)
PRESS RELEASE: STScI-PR06-34
HUBBLE FINDS EXTRASOLAR PLANETS FAR ACROSS OUR GALAXY
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet
candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central region of
our Milky Way galaxy.
The planet bonanza was uncovered during a Hubble survey, called the
Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). Hubble
looked farther than has ever successfully been searched for extrasolar
planets. Hubble peered at 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of
our galaxy 26,000 light-years away. That is one-quarter the diameter of
the Milky Way's spiral disk. The results will appear in the . 5 issue
of the journal Nature.
To see and read more about SWEEPS on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/34
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0612.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-38-06.html
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