Hubble Takes Images of Planet Orbiting Star

NASA’s Hubble Telescope has taken images of a planet that circles another star.

The first visible-light snapshot of Fomalhaut b was released last week in Science. The planet orbits a southern star, called Fomalhaut that is about 25 light-years away. The planet is estimated to be less than three times Jupiter’s mass, and the star is part of the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Scientists believe that the planet may have a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust that reflects starlight, since it’s brighter than expected for its size.

“Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding,” Kalas said. “Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off.”

NASA hopes that its James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013, will capture infrared images while searching for other planets and asteroid belts. NASA also will seek signs of water vapor clouds and give a glimpse of how the 100 million-year-old planet evolved.

“Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving,” team member Mark Clampin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. “Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring’s shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is ‘follow the dust.'”

(Image: C-Net)