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Sunday, May 1, 2005 |
2M1207b
Far Away. BBC Science -- European and American scientists say they have photographed a planet outside the Solar System for the first time. The European Southern Observatory group said the red image is the first direct shot of a planet around another star. The planet, known as 2M1207b, is about five times the size of Jupiter and is orbiting at a distance nearly twice as far as Neptune is from our Sun. The parent star and planet are more than 200 light-years away near the southern constellation of Hydra. There has been a lot of competition among astronomers to secure the first direct picture of an exoplanet. When the ESO group first released the picture last September there was doubt over whether the star and planet were gravitationally bound. But follow-up images taken at the Very Large Telescope facility in Chile show the two objects are moving together. "Our new images are quite convincing," said Gael Chauvin, an Eso astronomer, "this really is a planet - the first planet that has ever been imaged outside of our Solar System." (04/30/05) [Synergic Earth News]
5:23:08 PM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Santoro.
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