Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

In mid-November, just a week after Barack Obama was elected president, another bit of news electrified a community of New Yorkers. Members of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York gathered for their regular meeting on November 22nd and discussed the latest leap in space discovery. For the first time, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took an image of a planet in another solar system: a body approximately three times the size of Jupiter, orbiting the southern star Fomalhaut.

Although astronomers have monitored activity in Fomalhaut’s system (and other systems) for years, the new information they can get from viewing the planet’s reflected light will deepen their knowledge about planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. Before this photograph, it was only through the absence of light that astronomers could get information about exoplanets. Bruce Kamiat explains:

Kamiat said that astronomers have worked for years to solve the problem of seeing a planet near a star, which is “like trying to see a firefly next to a searchlight.” The Hubble team developed a “coronagraph mask” to block the star’s light and show its surroundings. Meanwhile, a ground team on Mauna Kea in Hawaii used adaptive optics on their telescopes to help reduce distortion from viewing through Earth’s atmosphere. That allowed the team to image three planets around the star HR 8799. The news about both the Fomalhaut and HR 8799 planets was released on the same day.

Now that imaging is possible, astronomers can get spectral information to analyze the atmosphere and elemental composition of the planets. With future technology, scientists hope to see smaller, “rocky” planets, which are currently beyond the power of space telescopes to detect. Once smaller planets closer to their suns can be seen, scientists hope to discover whether or not they are suited to sustain organic life.

“You want life,” said AAA member Julian Parks. “That’s why we go out and look for these things. To find a planet that has life on it, that’s not too far away, and that we can communicate with.” But even if the first detectable life on an exoplanet is microbial, it’s one more step in what could be a centuries-long quest to answer the question of whether humans are alone in the universe.

NASA is often criticized for mismanaging its spending, most recently by astrophysicist Alan Stern in the New York Times. But for avid stargazers and seekers of extraterrestrial life, every effort is another step closer to answers. Not only would finding life on other planets be “cool,” said Parks, but a discovery of such magnitude might force people across the world to work together. Fellow AAA member Mary Carlson shares her hopes for the future:

On the evening of December 1, AAA president Rich Rosenberg set up his telescope on the Brooklyn Promenade to view a spectacular celestial event: the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, next to the sliver of a young moon. The planets were so brilliant that they could be seen with the naked eye, even in an area heavy with light pollution. Rosenberg shared his telescope with any passerby who cared to take a look, and true to his fellow astronomers’ sentiments, the event drew strangers together: