The Tracker’s head is spinning like a hot jupiter cooked with too many plasmatically searing eruptions of confusing and somewhat repetitive news. One thing is sure: for a place without a common name a world called HD 189733b has gotten a lot of attention the last two days. It’s the Britney Spears of planets – in the news with or without much new to say. We read of it about two weeks ago. And before that, about a year ago. (OK, starlets and other young, pretty, and unpredictable entertainment stars get more ink than this real star). All this due to the gases – CO2 and H2O -  in its atmosphere as revealed in spectra that the NASA space telescopes Hubble and Spitzer have gathered. The science here is wonderful – I just don’t understand the news flow.

Yesterday’s post – just scroll down a few – related a burst of news over a Hubble-using team’s discernment of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the planet, circling a red dwarf star about 63 light years away in a close and conveniently eclipsing orbit as seen from here). That in itself was the second such gaggle of news on this, all of which vindicates expectation that this and presumably other gas giants of other stars have CO2 in their air. A paper on its CO2, as reported in yesterday’s post, is pending at Astrophysical Journal Letters. And NASA had a press conference this week even though the story has been around and in public for weeks.

Now, today, comes another crowd heralding detection of water vapor on the same planet by users of NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. It has the same basic news value -  evidence that astronomers are getting good at this spectroscopy of planets thing. Thus they move closer to ability to see direct evidence of biological meddling in atmospheres of more Earthlike planets, some day. If they do, that’s huge news. Again, some day.

HOWEVER. NASA announced what sure looks like the same news in a press release July 11 last year saying in essence the planet is one giant and very humid romertopf, stiff with cooking-hot water vapor. That one got traction then: see for example, A Space.com Ker Than report, and ones from The Independent (UK) and  Nat’l Geographic News Mason Inman. That research found formal publication in Nature.

Nonetheless, another group is publishing further evidence, now and in Nature again, for said water (vapor) on said giant roasted planet where nothing can live.  This gets further pickup, with most outlets acknowledging the planet’s CO2 news that came out this week. But this week’s stories don’t tell readers that this planet and its gases, including H2O, have hit the news wires together, before. Why is Nature publishing essentially the same info, from another group? The paper gives a pretty clear hint – it says questions had arose about the heft of last year’s evidence (footnotes 4 and 11, for those with access to the journal). A lot of reporters writing in a rush might easily have missed that rather nifty angle to the news: does this vindicate the woman at an astrophysics institute in France who said more than a year ago that she saw water out there? But it doesn’t take much to learn that media reports already spread word of water on the world HD 189733b.

Today’s Stories:

BBC Julian Siddle ;  San Francisco Chronicle David Perlman ; Space.com Andrea Thompson ;

Last moment addition: A pretty good overall summary of this story with a sober explanation of the news – and with a clear sense of its history – is on a small NY-based online “newspaper,” eFluxMedia, by Dee Chisamera.

-CP

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