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A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting

402 points · 82 comments · mariuz

  1. whiterook6 · · focus · HN ↗
    I swear I'm not trying to criticize, but, uh--why only 10 or so photos? Why not just film it long term? Is it our position in earth's orbit that only lets us image that system once a year or so?
    1. wthomp · · focus · HN ↗
      The main reason, is why bother? We know there’s four planets, we know they orbit according to Keplers laws, we know how bright they are. The public outreach is reasonably well handled by this motion smoothed video. Better to use that telescope time to look for new planets instead!
      1. wthomp · · focus · HN ↗
        That said yes there is something about earths orbit. There’s a few month window that gives the best observation of this star. We time the observations to be roughly June- November most years.
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