FirstLight Astronomy Club

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago, a newborn in planet lifetimes.
"We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone," explained team leader Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.”The discovery paper of PSO J318.5-22 is being published by Astrophysical Journal Letters is here in the link below!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457

[1310.0457] The Extremely Red, Young L Dwarf PSO J318-22: A Free-Floating Planetary-Mass Analog... http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457

Hi guys ! So astronomy is going to Oscars @ 6pm on Tuesday the 3rd , alumni welcome ! PLEASE RSVP to Sarah (951)795-1003 by Monday ! Thanks guys !!! See you there . ❤️

FirstLight Ice Skating III Poetry in Motion.

For my nerdy astro kids. (I love this stuff.) Thanks Scott Kardel!

How Wrong is Your Time Zone? In an ideal world, everyone's clocks would strike 12 noon just as the Sun reached the highest point in its path across the sky. But clock- (aka "standard-") time and solar time rarely overlap, with one generally leading or lagging behind the other – a fact this map by math blogger and Google enginee...