Sunday, April 03, 2005
First Confirmed Picture of a Planet Beyond the Solar System
After a few close calls, astronomers have finally obtained the first photograph of a planet beyond our solar system, SPACE.com has learned.
And this time they say they're sure. Though some doubt lingers about the mass of the object.
The planet is thought to be one to two times as massive as Jupiter, according to the scientists who imaged it. It orbits a star similar to a young version of our Sun.
The star, GQ Lupi, has been observed by a team of European astronomers since 1999. They have made three images using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. The Hubble Space Telescope and the Japanese Subaru Telescope each contributed an image, too.
The work was led by Ralph Neuhaeuser of the Astrophysical Institute & University Observatory (AIU).
"The detection of the faint object near the bright star is certain," Neuhaeuser told SPACE.com on Friday.
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.
Jayawardhana added, though, that some models used to estimate the object's heft show it could be tens of times as massive as Jupiter, in which case it might cross over into the territory, bulk-wise, of a failed type of star known as a brown dwarf.
By Robert Roy Britt
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