A brief heads-up on the ongoing work on 51 Peg, which Greg Laughlin and team are studying to see if additional planets can be found in the voluminous data. 51 Peg, remember, was the first example of an extrasolar planet being found around a main-sequence star. The dataset goes back ten years and is far more extensive than those used in most other planet discoveries via radial velocity measurements.
Using the Systemic Console, Laughlin sees evidence of a possible second planetary companion to 51 Peg, and it’s a beauty: a Saturn-class world in an Earth-like orbit. “Does it really exist, this room-temperature Saturn?,” Laughlin writes. “Is it really out there? Do furious anticyclonic storms spin through its cloud bands? Does it have rings? Does it loom as enormous white crescent in the deep blue twilight sky of a habitable moon?”
51 Peg c is a breaktaking, beautiful thought, but Laughlin is quick to caution that this cannot yet be described as an exoplanet discovery. Plenty of work remains to be done, and it is possible that seasonal effects having to do with the telescope used in the observation might be one alternative explanation among several. So think of that ‘room temperature Saturn’ as a gorgeous concept that may or may not pan out, but do read the Systemic entries on it as the work continues.
And bear in mind this other Laughlin thought: “I have no doubt that there are many other exciting, undiscovered curiosities lurking in the published radial velocity data sets.” Not to mention the fact that our data keep accumulating. As I seem to say every month or so, what a time to be alive and doing science!
