First photo of extra-solar planet around Sun-like star?

I don't know if this has been posted but I was thrilled to read it.
Space.com

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun," said David Lafrenière, an astronomer at the University of Toronto who led the team that discovered the star. "If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward."

If this turns out to be fact, then it's wonderful news. Just think, in another few years or so, Earth-sized, Earth-like planets may be discovered and with a spectrogragh reading of the atmospheres, it may be be the first concrete evidence that life does exist outside the Solar System (something that I've always believed).

Concrete evidence you say? For oxygen to exist in an atmosphere, you must have plants and for plants to exist you must have organisms that exhale carbon dioxide.

this really is world shattering news. imagine if that planet is earth but future earth and they are visiting us to make sure we're good. i really hope that in my lifetime we do get concrete proof of aliens. and hopefully they are intelligent and not some kind of bacteria found in a 100000 year old rock.

#in; way to close to the sun to have life.

Awesome find! I am looking forward to them confirming that this planet may be orbiting this star.

To xbranscombex, it isn't that close to that star. The distance between the planet and star is estimated to be 330 times longer than the earth and sun distance.

Any idea what the tempature on that planet is?

I saw this article a couple of days ago...I wonder if it's the same object. Yours looks a lot closer to the sun than the one in the article.

BBC News

Distant object

A planet with a temperature of 1800K at a distance of 49 billion kms from its parent star??? I think they're stretching the term "planet" rather too far.

Originally posted by Mogget
A planet with a temperature of 1800K at a distance of 49 billion kms from its parent star??? I think they're stretching the term "planet" rather too far.

I have to agree 100%. This thing is a failed star, at best. Over 1000K is traditionally not planet-like, especially that far out from the host star. They even note how odd it is for a planet that size to form that far out. That's probably because it formed simultaneously with the "host star" as a failed companion star, not a planet.

[edit on 17-9-2008 by ngchunter]