November 13, 2008 - Scientific American
Two groups of researchers searching for extrasolar planets—planets orbiting stars other than our own sun—laid claim today to an astronomy milestone: photographing extrasolar planets directly, rather than inferring their presence through effects on their parent stars.
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Marois and his team used ground-based infrared detection to seek out exoplanets around nearby, young, massive stars—those whose planets would have wide orbits and emit significant amounts of radiation as they cool from their relatively recent births millions of years ago. After narrowing some 80 candidate stars to 20 "really, really interesting" ones with infrared excess (indicating the presence of orbiting dust), the researchers settled on a particularly appealing star.
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