[Chaos-l] First visible light image of planet orbiting another star

[D Gary Grady]

A tiny dot in an astronomical photo is apparently a three-Jupiter-mass 
planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut at nearly 14 times the Sun-Jupiter 
distance. Fomalhaut is one of the closest stars to Earth, just 25 
light-years away. The planet has been imaged multiple times with slight 
visible proper motion between exposures, showing that it is in fact in 
orbit:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081114.html

In addition, there is reason to believe that unlike previous such 
claimed images of exoplanets, this object probably is a big planet 
rather than a brown dwarf "failed" star.

And there are three *more* extrasolar planets imaged by another team. 
All this is covered here:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/34395079.html

AAAS members can read a paper here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1167569v1.pdf

(In passing, on a completely different subject, I've discovered AAAS 
members receive a large enough discount on Apple purchases that if you 
plan to buy a Mac laptop you actually save money by joining AAAS. Since 
I was already a member, I've been kicking myhself for not learning about 
this before I bought my MacBook PRo...)


-- 
D Gary Grady
Durham NC USA
DGaryGrady at verizon.net