Astronomers using a network of amateur-sized telescopes called the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES), have found an extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star just 750 light years from Earth, in the constellation Draco, that exhibits the most ideal geometry known for studying the planet's composition and atmosphere.
The astronomers watched for small dips in a star's brightness produced when a planet passes in front of it and block some of its light.
The team determined that it is slightly larger than Jupiter, with about 1.3 times the giant planet's mass and 1.2 times its radius. It also orbits its host star in just 2.5 days in an orbit 10 times smaller than Mercury's around the Sun.

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

All ? I very much doubt it.
Very interesting, but that first article left a bad taste in my mouth.

Hehe,
i just spat out the New scientist link for the lay people.

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Certainly not "all" its secrets, but it does seem that in a few years we may know more about TrES-2 than about any other extrasolar planet.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Title: TrES-2: The First Transiting Planet in the Kepler Field
Authors: Francis T. O'Donovan, David Charbonneau, Georgi Mandushev, Edward W. Dunham, David W. Latham, Guillermo Torres, Alessandro Sozzetti, Timothy M. Brown, John T. Trauger, Juan A. Belmonte, Markus Rabus, Jose M. Almenara, Roi Alonso, Hans J. Deeg, Gilbert A. Esquerdo, Emilio E. Falco, Lynne A. Hillenbrand, Anna Roussanova, Robert P. Stefanik, Joshua N. Winn

We announce the discovery of the second transiting hot Jupiter discovered by the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey. The planet, which we dub TrES-2, orbits the nearby star GSC 03549-02811 every 2.47063 days. From high-resolution spectra, we determine that the star has T_eff = 5960 ±100 K and log(g) = 4.4 ±0.2, implying a spectral type of G0V and a mass of 1.08 +0.11/-0.05 M_sun. High-precision radial-velocity measurements confirm a sinusoidal variation with the period and phase predicted by the photometry, and rule out the presence of line-bisector variations that would indicate that the spectroscopic orbit is spurious. We estimate a planetary mass of 1.28 +0.09/-0.04 M_Jup. We model B, r, R, and I photometric timeseries of the 1.4%-deep transits and find a planetary radius of 1.24 +0.09/-0.06 R_Jup. This planet lies within the field of view of the NASA Kepler mission, ensuring that hundreds of upcoming transits will be monitored with exquisite precision and permitting a host of unprecedented investigations.

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...