Fact Sheet
First Light
Astronomers last week said they have confirmed that this is the first image of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet is the small red blob to the lower left of the brighter object. The planet orbits a brown dwarf named 2M1207. A brown dwarf is a glowing ball of gas that is not massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion reactions in its core and shine as a true star. Astronomers say the planet is no more than five times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our own solar system. It orbits 2M1207 at about 55 times Earth's distance from the Sun. Astronomers snapped this image one year ago with the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Additional observations with Hubble Space Telescope and another telescope in Chile confirmed that the object is a planet and not a background star that happens to line up along the same line of sight as 2M1207. The brown dwarf and its planet are close to 200 light-years away, in the constellation Hydra. The planet looks so small as seen from Earth that astronomers will not be able to obtain detailed images of it with current-day telescopes. [European Southern Observatory]
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