Word: mcelwaine
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only about 10 to 40 times the mass of Jupiter. If it were more than 13 Jupiter masses, it would probably be considered a brown dwarf, which is a kind of failed star. "We're calling it a planet-like object rather than a planet," says Michael McElwain, a postdoctoral student at Princeton who co-authored the discovery paper for Astrophysical Journal Letters published in November. (See the 50 best inventions...
...which largely cancel out atmospheric blurring; third, the telescope's top-notch coronagraph filter, which blots out most starlight to remove the glare. And finally, the whole thing operates in infrared light, a type of light that renders planets especially bright and sunlike stars relatively dim. In short, says McElwain, "We're using state-of-the-art instruments on a state-of-the-art telescope." (See TIME's video "10 Questions for Neil deGrasse Tyson...
Even with all that going for them, the discovery came as a surprise, because the instruments were still being tested out. "We were thrilled to see something so early in the process," says McElwain. What's especially thrilling is that GJ 758 B could be as close to its star as Neptune is to the sun - unusual, considering that astronomers had previously believed that large planets formed closer to or farther from their stars, but not in GJ 758 B's location. In the best-case, most optimistic scenario, McElwain says, we might be able to image a Jupiter-mass...
...AUTISTIC TEENAGER JASON McElwain, the manager of the varsity basketball team at Greece Athena High School in Rochester, N.Y., just the chance to suit up for Greece Athena's final home game was a thrill. Then his coach put him on the floor. McElwain hit six three-pointers and one more shot, to finish with 20 points in just four minutes. After he sank his final basket at the buzzer, delirious fans carried McElwain off the court. And Columbia Pictures bought the rights to his story...