In mid-June 2011, media reported that South African astronomers have found evidence for the existence of two giant planets orbiting a binary star system. The South African Astronomical Observatory said that the discovery by Stephen Potter, Encarni Romero-Colmenero and their collaborators, if confirmed, would be an example of an unusual planetary system with two suns, a white dwarf star and a red dwarf star.
The two stars are small. Both of them would fit into our Sun. They are so close that it takes them only a couple of hours to orbit each other. Around them orbit two gigantic planets, with the masses of at least six and eight times of Jupiter. One planet needs sixteen, and the other five years to orbit their twin stars. The presence of the planets was inferred from the irregular eclipses of the stars.
The discovery was the result of researches and observations carried out in the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), with the help of Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). The SAAO team combined own observations with the archival data spanning almost thirty years, gathered by numerous observatories and satellites worldwide.
SAAO is the South African centre for optical and infrared astronomy with headquarters in Cape Town. It conducts fundamental research in astronomy and astrophysics, providing observing facilities for astronomers from many other countries and from within South Africa. SALT is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, able to record distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the naked eye. SALT is stationed on a remote hilltop near Sutherland in the Karoo.
If confirmed, the discovery of the binary planetary system will be another significant feather in the cap of South African astronomy. Last year, SAAO won the bid to host the prestigious International Astronomical Union (IAU) Office for Astronomy Development (OAD). This is an important achievement for the country and the entire continent and an opportunity to enhance the African know-how in the field of astronomy.
The hosting of the IAU Office for Astronomy Development, as well as the newest discovery by the South African astronomers, may well boost the country’s bid to host the Square Kilometre Array Project (SKA).
SKA is a next-generation mega telescope that will be 10,000 times more powerful than any existing technology. The concept, born in the early 1990s, has become one of the most ambitious international science projects. The design and building of the telescope involves hundreds of scientists and engineers from more than twenty countries all over the world. It has been said that in the first six hours of its operation, the SKA will receive more data than has been received in the entire history of radio astronomy, allowing astronomers to see back close to the time of Big Bang and promising to revolutionise science by answering some of the most fundamental questions about the origin, nature and evolution of the universe. SKA will need a quiet radio spectrum, clear skies, high altitude and low seismic activity. The cost of SKA is estimated at R14.8 billion.
South Africa, with its African partners – among them Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique and Zambia - and Australia, with New Zealand, have been shortlisted to host the future telescope. The final decision should be announced in 2012. Once the host nation is announced, the construction of SKA will begin in 2016. The completion is scheduled for 2020.
If South Africa wins the hosting bid, engineers will connect antennas in the arid Karoo region by remote link to a network of dishes stretching across southern and eastern Africa and as far away as Ghana. South African officials say the project will help make the country, and the continent, a hub of scientific activity and reverse the "brain drain" that has seen Africa lose much of its top scientific talent to the rest of the world. As one of the South African scientists says, it is not only about turning people into professional astronomers; it’s about harnessing their natural curiosity about their environment and turning that into a desire to learn more.
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