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Article: Superstar Search.(astronomical observations)
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- February 21, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Scholastic, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy has paved his way into the superstar Hall of Fame. Since 1995, Marcy and a team of astronomers at the University of California at Berkeley have sleuthed out 25 extrasolar (outside our solar system) planets (see SW 9/6/99). But until recently they relied on complex evidence to back up their discoveries--with no visible proof.
That changed last November, as Marcy's team peered into the heavens through the most powerful optical telescopes in the world: the twin Keck telescopes, located on a remote Hawaiian volcano summit. The astronomers gazed at stars 153 light-years (895,000 billion miles) from earth. They detected six stars' wobbling ...