Actually, they did talk about Hot Saturns for a short bit after they broke the sub-Jupiter mass level in discoveries. Not long after that, the first Neptune analogues were found and they started differentiating them based on their internal make up, instead of just their mass. Jupiter is our largest pure gas giant, and Neptune is our largest rocky core gas giant, by right, they become the break points. Just as we speak of Super Earths instead of Super Venuses (even though some of them are probably more analagous to Venus than Earth by a LONG shot).

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

If scientists would say hot Saturn rather than hot Jupiter, the general public would expect the scientists to have found a ring system around the exoplanet. I guess that settles the discussion between scientists whether to use the expression 'hot Saturn' or 'hot Jupiter'.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Mind, embracing a "hot Uranus" classification would be a great boon to punsters everywhere.

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Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
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Even funnier is the fact that even hot Neptunes consist mostly of ice.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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Well, Uranus is the larger than Neptune in size, but smaller in mass.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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You mean because of the great pressures in the planets? True... for some of the exoplanets, but i would guess that a hot Neptune very close to its parent star being extremely hot would be enough for the water ice to melt - if a planet with water molekyles could be former there at all.

Good, then i wasn't totally wrong on this one

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Actually, Jupiter does have a ring system - it's not as extensive or impressive as Saturn's, but in fact all the gas giants in our solar system have rings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Planetary_rings

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It doesn't melt because of the pressure... being close to the star not a big difference, temperature of the ice within Uranus and Neptune is also in thousands of degrees.

Of course, if the planet loses most of its atmosphere, the situation can be very different. These hot Neptunes however are too hot to have a liquid surface, but the naked core of a Neptune-like planet could harbor an ocean if it had Earth-like temperatures.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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True, but since we are talking about the general public, "no one" knows about this

OK, wasn't aware of how much the pressure mattered compared to the temperature.

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Belated news... HAT-P12b, another transiting hot Saturn.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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how many Extra-solar Planets and planetary systems have been found so far?

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Exoplanets.org:

I expect the system count is in there, too, or derivable from tables.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

... if talking deliberately 'nearby stars', or else.

http://exoplanet.eu/

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so Corot-7b is smallest confirmed super-Earth?

are there any planned missions in future for Extra-solar research and stuff?

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Very nice post. It's informative, worth reading.

What do you mean? Gl 581 e is only 1.94003432 Earth masses, while CoRoT-7 b is 11.12405 Earth masses.

http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?...=&mode=2&more=

Sure, i would suggest Googling these missions:
Gaia: December 2011
SIM - Space Interferometry Mission: 2015 / 2016
Darwin: 2015 / 2020+
TPF-C - Terrestial Planet Finder C (possible cancellation): 2014
TPF-I - Terrestial Planet Finder I (possible cancellation): 2020

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After only 50 years of trying, a planet has been discovered using astrometry. It orbits the feeble red dwarf VB 10 at the distance of Mercury, but is as cold as Jupiter. Would be nice to see some data on it.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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Wow, I guess persistence really does pay off.

I wonder if anyone will put together a survey that combines all three methods (radial, transit, and astrometry) at some point. Would be a great way of doing a comprehensive survey of nearby star systems, using the strengths and weaknesses of each method to detect the highest possible number of planets around the greatest variety of stars and in the greatest number of possible orbits.

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I don't follow why they think astrometry is particularly suited to finding Earth-like planets?

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More mass sensitive? (Just a guess).

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From what I can gather, their argument is that astrometry is designed for detecting Solar System analogues. In particular, systems with Jupiters in the same (relative to Habitable Zone) orbits as their equivalent in our system.

It seems like a pretty weak argument to me considering all the different ways planets could (and have been proven to) be formed. A gas giant * may * be necessary for the well-being of an Earthlike planet (taking cometary hits, clearing much of the system of debris that could later rain down on the planet) but it is far from certain that a gas giant at the same relative distance as Earth is from Jupiter is needed for a biosphere to thrive.

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Of course, this planet is not the first detected by astrometry. There are some planets that have been detected astrometrically after RV detection.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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I'll stay keen on the idea as it seems they can find interesting analouges to the solar system - as long as they can prove it statistically.

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Third planet for the HIP 14810 system. A 0.57 M_J Jovian orbiting at 1.89 AU on a mildly eccentric (e = 0.173) orbit.

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An exoplanet... in Andromeda Galaxy?!!!

arXiv.org preprint is here.

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A bunch of massive planets: two very massive super-Jovians/brown dwarfs around the bright orange giant BD+20°2457, a super-Jovian around the orange giant HD 240210, and an eccentric Jupiter around the orange dwarf BD+14°4559.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Welcome.

I can haz Earthlike?

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For now i will stay skeptisc about finding exoplanets in the Andromeda Galaxy. But well, if they say:
... then there's something i didn't know about this technique that actually says finding extra-galaxy planets is easier than what most people, myself included, might think. BTW: 'Easier' is a relative word

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Extragalactic microlensing is only a very temporary event, so I assume there really is no way to verify their findings, or learn more about the possible exoplanet, right?

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