Astronomers Have Finally Obtained The First Photograph Of A Planet Beyond

Our Solar System.

Photo marks milestone in planet search
Confirmed image shows hot planet near distant star


The bright young star GQ Lupi is at the center of this image, and the outlying planet can be seen to the right, labeled "b."

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The system is young, so the planet is rather warm, like a bun fresh out of the oven. That warmth made it comparatively easier to see in the glare of its host star compared with more mature planets. Also, the planet is very far from the star — about 100 times the distance between Earth and the sun, another factor in helping to separate the light between the two objects.

The discovery will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Neuhaeuser's co-authors include Ph.D. student Markus Mugrauer, who performed the observations, and Guenther Wuchterl.

"This is the first directly imaged and confirmed companion to a sunlike star, and as such marks the dawn of a new era in planet detection," said Ray Jayawardhana, a University of Toronto researcher who was not involved in the discovery but has seen the scientific paper.

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Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7357501/

Just thought I'd throw a little science into the mix, for a change.

Unless of course this is an April Fool's joke.

:shrug:

I read the other day they can actually see planets now. Before they confirmed them indirectly by charting the 'wobble' of a star

Send Bush etal there to protect it ASAP!

I love this stuff.

do they have decent health care system?

on that planet, then they have a single-payor system.....

on edit: btw I love this stuff too.......keep posting....

I'm thinkin the gravity there has gotta be a bitch!

:hi:

I love science and I'm glad to hear they're still doing stuff. :)

Just for a sense of scale:

Jupiter: 5.2
Saturn: 9.4
Uranus 19.4
Neptune: 30.1
Pluto: 49.5

So this planet is about twice as far from its sun as Pluto is from ours.

:yourock:

or SOP (Save our Planet)!

I used to have a poster that showed aliens going "oooooohhhh" and "aaaaahhhh" as if enjoying fireworks while watching Earth descend into Global Nuclear War. I think it was a Gary Larson cartoon. Funny, but not.

Since everything in the universe is 6,000 years old.

It'll be in all the new science textbooks soon.

But I fear you may be correct!

:argh:

update. :applause:

I love this stuff! :D B-) Do they have sat TV, I wonder?

Just cause.

Who needs it?? (sarcasm off)

I know they're "destroying" the Hubble in a few years, but why are they doing that? Can you clarify this for me please.

while it does need regular maintanance to be kept operational.

Well, whatever, it's cool. Imagine if we one day find intelligent life. Imagine how that would radically change everything, in a second, nothing would ever be the same again.

If it is an acual photo, I doubt it's a planet. Even "fresh out of the oven", I doubt a mere planet could glow bright enough to provide light that bright that could be seen from several light years away. And if it is 50 AUs from its sun, and as large as it appears to be, it is probably a dwarf binary star.

If so , buy cheap---sell dear

you might know our own gas giant Jupiter does put out more heat then it receives from the sun - so an even larger gas giant that's brand new can very well be quite hot, so that it can be detectable from earth.
It may yet turn out this thing is more like a brown dwarf companion star then an actual planet, but that would not mean this discovery a joke.