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Space & Planetary Science

Extrasolar Planet Announcements

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 14, 2006

Strange New Planet Baffles Astronomers

“Using a network of small automated telescopes, astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known world. This new planet, designated HAT-P-1, orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta.”

Astronomers Reveal First Alien I.D. Chart

“It is only a matter of time before astronomers find an Earth-sized planet orbiting a distant star. When they do, the first questions people will ask are: Is it habitable? And even more importantly, is there life present on it already?”

Editor’s note: This is pretty amazing stuff – yet NASA doesn’t seem to want to tell anyone. Indeed, according to these two press reelases “Major funding for HATnet was provided by NASA” and “This research was funded by NASA.” Yet these is nothing on SMD’s home page or this “Breaking News” page at SMD or, for that matter, on NASA’s general Breaking News page as of 11:09 am EDT. And the press event was held several blocks down the street from NASA HQ.

Editor’s 15 Sep update: 24 hours after the news was released, SMD finally posted a link on its “Breaking News” page to a story on ARC’s Astrobiology Magazine website which is based on only one of the press releases issued yesterday – but not the other. How odd. Why not just link to the original press releases, or, since the research was funded by NASA, simply reissue the press releases – as has been done in the past? It certainly seems like SMD is not very motivated ot tell people what it is doing.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.