Thursday, September 18, 2008

A Maybe Planet, Orbiting Its Maybe Sun

September 18, 2008 - New York Times
Astronomers from the University of Toronto have published a picture of what they say might be the first image of a planet orbiting another Sunlike star.
The planet, according to their observations, is 7 to 12 times as massive as Jupiter and is about 30 billion miles from a star known as 1RXS J160929.1-210524, about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
The picture was taken last spring by the 270-inch diameter Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, using so-called adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric blurring and thus sharpen the images of both star and planet.
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