April 3, 2008

WASP Exoplanets Follow-up


WASP Planets
No. These are not eyeballs nor fisheggs. They're new planets discovered by superWASP.
As promised, the 10 new wasp planets are now in the Freebase Catalogue of exoplanets, WASP-6b all the way to WASP-15b. As there are still some discrepancies in data, I am still reluctant to add more specific numbers in there. Concurrently, I've been discussing with the folks at Freebase on how to effectively catalog exoplanets and all its properties. And also hoping it could be placed within the Freebase's Astronomy domain for a wider public use and exposure. I also plan to create a Freebased Widget sometime in the future.
Learning as I go, I discovered some differences in how exoplanet data are represented compared to regular planets. One of the differences I notice is in the unit of measurement used for Mass and Radius: For planets "Earth Mass" is used, whereas exoplanets use "Jupiter Mass".
Being a new field, Exoplanetary Science or Exoplanetology is still in its infancy. So if anyone wants to be part of this growing field of science, feel free to join in and be part of history.

More Links:
Centauri Dreams on the WASP exoplanets
Exoplanet Data From SuperWASP
Sky and Telescope News


1 comment:

Gordon said...

So here's the latest Extrasolar Planet
type I've modeled on the testing area of freebase.

On the discussion link let me know what you think.