Friday, November 14, 2008

Exoplanets finally come into view

November 13, 2008 - BBC News
The first pictures of planets outside our Solar System have been taken, two groups report in the journal Science.

Visible and infrared images have been snapped of a planet orbiting a star 25 light-years away.

The planet is believed to be the coolest, lowest-mass object ever seen outside our own solar neighbourhood.

In a separate study, an exoplanetary system, comprising three planets, has been directly imaged, circling a star in the constellation Pegasus.

...

Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, Canada, and his team used the Keck and Gemini telescopes in Hawaii to look near a star called HR 8799, which is just visible to the naked eye.

...