Astronomy Lecture: First photos of a planet orbiting another star

October 7, 2009.
Mummy and I left home at about 6:15pm and drove on Capitol Expressway onto CA-87 and took I-280 onto I-237 to El Camino Real and took El Monte Road to Foothill College and drove into the parking lot. But the parking lot was full and we had to park in the additional parking area. We went up a slope into the Robert Smithwick Theater. We got into the theater at 7:01 pm. Andrew Fraknoi was giving an introduction to the lecture. Finally, Prof. Peter Kalas entered the;theater and started his presentation/lecture.


He first said that he bet with NASA on three stars for planets around them. The three stars were Vega, Foamohaut and β Pictorial. With the Hubble Space Telescope, he got a picture of Foamohaut and observed that there was a planet orbiting around it. He called the planet Foamohaut B. The star was Foamohaut A. Some people, in 1984, observed that there was dust around a few stars and came up with a theory that some of the dust might have coalesced into a planet. But in 1988, however, Prof. Kalas' professor disagreed with this theory. Prof. Kalas stopped listening to his own professor's theory and finally proved his professor wrong. The Hubble Telescope was launched in 1990 and after talking with NASA for a long time for using the Hubble to find extra-terrestial planets, he was able to convince them to do so. He finally found a planet from the photographs captured by Hubble. He ended the lecture by saying "I hope you find Foamohaut C, D and E". It was question and answer time and I asked him a question "What were the three stars that you bet with NASA and how did you pick those three stars?". He answered "I picked the stars closest to us and the ones I thought will have planets around them. Their names are Vega, Foamohaut and β Pictorial".

We ran down the slope into the additional parking area, went into the car. Then we returned home.
The most interesting part of the lecture was the extra-terrestrial planet around a star. This planet, Foamohaut B is slightly bigger than Neptune.