Direct Image of a Planet Orbiting Another Star

Taken from a post on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site. The star is listed as 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (Phil calls it 1RXS 1609 for 'short.'); it's a sun-like star about 500 light years from our solar system. The planet is about 8 times the mass of Jupiter and relatively young. Since it's still cooling down from its formation, it is hot enough to be imaged in near-infrared.

The object was actually first imaged by the 8-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, in 2008. At the time, astronomers were not certain if it was an orbiting planet or another star or galaxy. More recent images confirm that it's a planet. See the discussion on Bad Astronomy, complete with diagrams.

Some news stories are incorrectly calling this: "The first direct image of a planet orbiting an alien star." Actually, it's just the first such planet imaged from a ground-based telescope.



So, at the most recent count, we now have 3 (count 'em!) planets around other stars that have been imaged directly, not just inferred by the motion of the star or the dimming of the star as the planet passed in front of it. It's an amazing time we live in, even with all the horrible news about the economy and the ecological disaster in the gulf.

Kinda puny, don't you think?

and thus less likely to be trampled by dwarves.

Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people... the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock... of Stonehenge!

Stonehenge is a transmitter. The Pandorica is underneath, in the Underhenge. It was built to contain the most feared being in the cosmos, a warrior soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies, a being that would one day drop in out of the sky and tear down your world.

:silly:

Or 1/3600th of a degree of the sky.