Planets outside the solar system
GALACTIC SURPRISE: A dust ring, in red, surrounds the star Fomalhaut, located at the centre of the image but is not visible.
A little more of the universe has been pried out of the shadows. Two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of what are most likely planets going around other stars.
The achievement, the result of years of effort on improved observational techniques and better data analysis, presages more such discoveries, the experts said, and will open the door to new investigations and discoveries of what planets are and how they came to be formed.
“It’s the tip of iceberg,” said Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. “Now that we know they are there, there is going to be an explosion.”
Mr. Marois is the leader of a team that recorded three planets circling a star known as HR 8799 that is 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The other team, led by Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, found a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from earth, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. more
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