Research System's IDL Leads Astronomers to Discovery of New Solar System.BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 1999-- Visual Analysis Language Allows for Detection of Minute Star Movement; Reveals the Presence of Orbiting Planets As recently as the early 1990s, astronomers were not aware of any star-orbiting planets other than the nine in our Solar System solar system, the sun and the surrounding planets, natural satellites, dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that are bound by its gravity. The sun is by far the most massive part of the solar system, containing almost 99.9% of the system's total mass. . Since then, not only have orbiting planets been discovered, but recently a trio of extrasolar planets was found orbiting the star Upsilon Andromedae Upsilon Andromedae (υ Andromedae / Ups And) is a binary star, somewhat younger than the Sun, and is approximately 44 light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. The system contains a yellow-white dwarf star (Upsilon Andromedae A) similar to the Sun and a dim red dwarf . This is the first multiple planet system ever found around another star and the discovery was made possible by astronomers' use of IDL (1) (Interface Definition Language) A language used to describe the interface to a routine or function. For example, objects in the CORBA distributed object environment are defined by an IDL, which describes the services performed by the object and how the data , the Interactive Data Language from Research Systems Inc. "When we began researching the existence of additional planets in the universe, we determined that without an extraordinary language for visual data analysis, sufficient visualization of our data might not be possible," said Dr. Geoff Marcy, San Francisco State University • • [ (SFSU SFSU San Francisco State University (California) ) astronomer and distinguished professor. "We explored every available remote data processing data processing or information processing, operations (e.g., handling, merging, sorting, and computing) performed upon data in accordance with strictly defined procedures, such as recording and summarizing the financial transactions of a language and IDL was the only one that would provide accurate measurement of the smallest movement of a star." Marcy and his research partner, Dr. Paul Butler Paul Butler is the name of:
"The tiniest movement of a star indicates that another mass, or planet, is close enough to pull on it and disrupt its stationary state “Ground state” redirects here. For the Angel episode, see Ground State (Angel episode). In quantum mechanics, a stationary state is an eigenstate of a Hamiltonian, or in other words, a state of definite energy. ," said Marcy. "IDL helped us detect not only the initial movement of Upsilon Andromedae but also a peculiar `wobble' that indicated it was being pulled on by not one, but a total of three planets." Since their research began in 1987, Marcy and Butler have discovered a total of 14 planets with the aid of IDL, a discreet signal processing language that enables in-depth analysis and visualization of complex data. Marcy estimates they have written 70,000 lines of code The statements and instructions that a programmer writes when creating a program. One line of this "source code" may generate one machine instruction or several depending on the programming language. A line of code in assembly language is typically turned into one machine instruction. exclusively in IDL during their planetary research. In addition, Marcy and Butler collect their data using the world's largest telescope, the Keck telescope, located on the Big Island of Hawaii. "Our research requires that we utilize the most advanced resources available," said Marcy. "Resources such as the Keck telescope and the world's most advanced visualization language make discoveries such as this new solar system possible." This first planetary system, found during a survey of 107 stars, suggests that planetary systems like our own are abundant in the Milky Way Galaxy Milky Way Galaxy Large spiral galaxy (roughly 150,000 light-years in diameter) that contains Earth's solar system. It includes the multitude of stars whose light is seen as the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band that encircles the sky defining the plane of the galactic , which contains 200 billion stars, Marcy noted. Upsilon Andromedae, that will be visible to the naked eye starting this month, is 44 light years away from Earth and it is roughly three billion years old, two-thirds the age of the Sun. About Interactive Data Language IDL, the Interactive Data Language, is Research Systems' flagship product. It is a fourth-generation programming language A fourth-generation programming language(1970s-1990) (abbreviated 4GL) is a programming language or programming environment designed with a specific purpose in mind, such as the development of commercial business software. used by engineers, scientists and software developers to build data analysis applications. These applications let users visualize and manipulate complex or extremely large technical data sets to detect and display patterns, trends, anomalies and other vital information. IDL's language simplifies programming and does not require the tedious edit-compile-link-debug cycle required by traditional languages allowing users to develop full portable applications much faster. About Research Systems Inc. Boulder-based Research Systems Inc., is a private company that supports more than 75,000 users of its data analysis and visualization software products worldwide through a direct sales force and network of international subsidiaries and distributors. Primary markets for the company's products are analysis, aerospace, earth sciences, physics, software development, medical imaging and test engineering. Additional information can be obtained at Research Systems' Web site located at http://www.rsinc.com. |
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