2M1207 b was the first exoplanet ever photographed, captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in 2004. It circles a brown dwarf, a failed star only about 25 times Jupiter’s mass, 55 times farther out than Earth orbits the Sun. Hubble later caught its brightness changing: patchy clouds and a day of about 10 hours.
A new real world every day, built from NASA data.
Sources:
• Planet data: NASA Exoplanet Archive, Planetary Systems table (exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu)
• First image (VLT/NACO, 2004) and confirmation: Chauvin et al. 2004, A&A 425, L29; Chauvin et al. 2005, A&A 438, L25; ESO releases eso0428 and eso0515
• Brown dwarf of about 25 Jupiter masses: ESO release eso0428
• 55 times the Earth–Sun distance: ESO release eso0515
• Patchy clouds and ~10-hour rotation: Zhou et al. 2016, ApJ Letters 818, L176; NASA/ESA Hubble release, 18 Feb 2016
• Formation debate (too wide an orbit for planet-style growth): Lodato et al. 2005, MNRAS 364, L91
• Temperature is the catalog’s estimate.
Footage & images (artist’s impressions unless noted):
• 2M1207 b illustrations: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) (opo1605a; clean copy NASA PIA16033), CC BY 4.0; ESO (eso0515c), CC BY 4.0
• Real VLT image of 2M1207 b (cropped, dark sky extended): ESO (eso0428a), CC BY 4.0
• Real Hubble footage of Jupiter: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M. Wong (UC Berkeley), G. Orton (JPL-Caltech), and G. Bacon (STScI) (heic1522a), CC BY 4.0
Narration: AI voice (Kokoro TTS). Music: original.
#space #exoplanets #astronomy #nasa #shorts
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