Many planets have been found circling other stars lately, now we are starting to find complete solar systems. The newest find is said to be close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye, or at least that is the way it was reported. The star that has this solar system is Epsilon Eridani and it is ten and a half light years away from us. It is the ninth closest star to Earth. I guess that we won't be going there anytime soon though, since ten and a half light years equals about 63 trillion miles. Not exactly a stones' throw from us. Astronomers are saying that this alien solar system contains at least one planet and maybe as many as three. As you can see we are not exactly refined in this type of technique yet. As the power of our instruments grow over time, we should be able to become a lot more accurate in determining these things and who knows, maybe we will be able to even see them directly some day, especially if we develop a huge telescope on the moon. I don't know if you have heard about that project yet? Scientists and astronomers want to develop a huge telescope using a pool of mercury that would be spun to make it ripple free. This would replace the mirror traditionally used in a reflecting telescope and would also allow for a larger reflecting surface, which in turn would enable us to see much farther and magnify much more. An added bonus would be that the moon has no atmosphere to distort any images. By the way this is where it was believed that Mr. Spock, the character from Star Trek fame, came from.

Back to that solar system. The star that the one to three planets are circling is slightly smaller and not as hot as our sun. It can be found in the constellation Eridanus and is near Orion in the northern sky. Astronomers have stated that it is a lot more like our solar system than it seems, because they believe ours was like it when it was about 850 million years old, which is the estimated age of that solar system. It does make one wonder exactly why scientists believe this? The answer to this question will appear in The Astrophysical Journal on January 10, 2009. It turns out that SETI, The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence searched this star in 1960, one of the very first searches ever done by this organization. Of course we know now that no intelligent signal was ever received. Since we know that the sun is so young, the chances of intelligent races living on a planet circling around it are almost nonexistent

When astronomers detect planets around other stars they usually do so by indirect means. They sometimes use measurements of orbits that show that something is tugging on them. An example of this would be a planet tugging slightly on a star. The scientists are just about sure that there are three planets circling this star, but can not be 100% sure, but they are sure enough to state that almost certainly three planets exist. The prediction now being made by some astronomers is that within the next decade, they will be able to observe these planets with newer telescopes. Telescopes have already found that there is two belts of rocky asteroids and an ice ring circling Epsilon Eridani. One of the planets is believed to be a gas giant and is thought to be a little heavier than Jupiter. There is one thing that I feel is quite a coincidence and that is the fact that the asteroid belt in that system is about at the same distance as the asteroid belt in our system. Looking at the second belt, that is about at the distance as Uranus.

So why is there this huge gap between the two belts? Astronomers feel the reason is that some of this stuff became planets and that is what happened here. One scientist said, "The easiest way to explain the gaps is to say there are planets there. It's the same way as the rings of Saturn are kept stable by the moons of Saturn ." In other words bodies formed and the gravitation kept things stable. This has led astronomers to form a theory that this is how bodies and solar systems clear out unwanted material, they form planets and bodies from it. Astronomers are not certain that they have found all the planets in this system and some believe that there might be Earth like planets in the system, that have yet to be discovered. Since the inside belt is so clean, it is felt that maybe there are some Earth like planets in it, circling this star and they are yet to be detected. Anything is possible I guess.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is the fact that a first has occurred in astronomy. Prior to now, astronomers have only been able to observe the result of a star blowing up. A star blowing up causes what is called a Nova or Supernova. As I said, only the results of this explosion have been seen, that was before this year. For the very first time in history, astronomers watched as a massive star went through agony and finally explode in a huge Supernova explosion. The event was considered an extremely lucky break for the scientists. Sometime in the past they were able to catch such an explosion a couple of weeks after the event and this was considered good. The explosion lasted only five minutes. Of course we were seeing this well after it happened since it takes time to travel those huge distances, but they did see the light from the star and saw the explosion, which was a monumental event for the scientific world.

The astronomers were using NASA's Swift X-ray satellite when they spotted a bright light nearby. Astronomers around the world were alerted and watched as this star became a Supernova. One astronomer said, "For years we have dreamed of seeing a star just as it was exploding, but actually finding one is a once-in-a-lifetime event," The Supernova has been named SN 2008D and it is over 90 million light years away. This means that the star exploded a very long time ago and we are just seeing this explosion now. When this baby gave up the ghost, man was not even on the Earth. It is felt that the star that exploded was almost the size of our sun, but over ninety times as dense. Another astronomer said, "The death of a massive star marks the birth of its explosion, along with the creation and ejection of heavy elements like oxygen and calcium necessary for life as we know it," At NASA it was said, "It was a gift of nature for Swift to be observing that patch of sky when the supernova exploded,"