First ever image of a planet orbiting a distant star

Hi, to all just browsing through APOD and in todays picture there is this infrared image of a star located about 500 light years away in the constellation of scorpius and it is much younger than the sun.

Located just 500 light-years away toward the constellation Scorpius, this star is only slightly less massive and a little cooler than the Sun. But it is much younger, a few million years old compared to the middle-aged Sun's 5 billion years

And also the planet orbiting it is 8 times the size of jupiter and about 330 AU from the star

This sharp infrared image shows the young star has a likely companion positioned above and left - a hot planet with about 8 times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting a whopping 330 times the Earth-Sun distance from its parent star

And the plus factor about this image

this picture likely represents the first direct image of a planet belonging to a star similar to the Sun.

Heres the link,

antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...




[edit on 19-9-2008 by peacejet]