We live in interesting times!
<p align=“center”>Tris</p>
The server seems to down at the moment. Here’s a link to CNN: http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/13/newplanet.ap/index.html
According to that story, the other planet is only 63% as massive as Jupiter, but it’s 60% wider. Damn thing must look like a football! It must be rotating very fast. Maybe they’ll call it Pontiac: “Wider is Better.” 
Good thing it’s “only” 153 light-years away. Much further, and we’d never have been able to detect the eclipse. Also good the system is oriented toward us. If we were looking at either the star’s North or South poles, we’d never have witnessed that eclipse.
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
Oh, I realized later that planet wouldn’t look like a football. Turn a cereal bowl upside down and place it atop another bowl that is right-side up.
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
So this planet’s YEAR is 3.523 days?!? That planet must be moving at quite a clip! Daaaamn!
–
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
I think they meant it has a 60% larger diameter, which would make it spherical. Just like a REAL football. So you were right the first time.
Although if you meant a cereal bowl that was a half-sphere, you were right the second time too.
Jupiter is wider at its equator than it is from pole to pole. And its poles are flattened. This is obvious when Jupiter is viewed from above its equator. But if you view it from above either pole, it’s perfectly round. In other words, it’s round and it’s wider than it is tall. It’s not a sphere.
Only from one end does a football look round.
Stacking two cereal bowls as I suggested will give you a structure that is round and wider than it is tall.
Now that I think of it, the planet may be shaped like a jelly doughnut.
And I still can’t get into that site that Tris linked us to. 
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
Here is the link, which works fine for me, at 4:21 AM EST. I left out the fancy link naming, this time. if it stretches the topic width I am sorry.
http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu:3636/realpublic/gen_info/news/extrasolarplanetNOV99.html
<p align=“center”>Tris</p>
[quote]
it’s round and it’s wider than it is tall.
True. Its polar/equatioral diameters differ by about 5%.
No, but the difference is negligable. I’d still describe it as a sphere.
This is what it was supposed to look like:
True. Its polar/equatioral diameters differ by about 5%.
No, but the difference is negligable. I’d still describe it as a sphere.
The Earth is not precisely spherical, but the difference cannot be seen by the naked eye. Jupiter’s deviation can be seen in any good photograph. And this other planet… WOW! If any science fiction writer ever conceived a world this weird, I don’t know about it.
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
Just got through to the non-cnn link in this thread.
While the wording on the CNN page was poor, there is nothing particularly wierd about this planet. It’s a near-spherical planet-shaped planet.
As I said earlier Jupiter is fairly round, the fact that it looks “squished” probably has more to do with the horizontal pattern than the actual shape of it. 5% isn’t that much.
I get it now! It’s simply less massive than Jupiter and wider at the same time! It occupies more space than Jupiter despite being less massive.
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
I wonder if this means its density is comparable to that of Saturn.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov