Hubble Telescope nabs first-ever shots of planet orbiting another star
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first-ever visible-light pictures of a planet orbiting another star, NASA scientists announced today. The photos represent a major advancement in the quest for space knowledge and are the culmination of a process stretching back more than 20 years.
The planet is orbiting the Fomalhaut star system and has been named “Fomalhaut b.” Scientists first theorized that the way space dust formed around Fomalhaut b might indicate that it was a planet back in the early 1980s.
Scientists were only able to finally confirm that these were, in fact, photos of a planet after using the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys coronograph to snap two images 21 months apart.
Mustering forth an unbelievable amount of patience wasn’t the only thing challenging about taking these pictures, either: Fomalhaut b is more than ONE BILLION times fainter than the star it orbits.
Below are copies of the actual visible-light image–that’s significant, because many Hubble images are snapped in either infrared or UV light–as well as an artist’s rendering showing what the place might look like.
This isn’t exactly a likely candidate for colonization, by the way: Aside from being 25 light years away, it’s 10.7 billion miles from the star, which is about 10 times the distance between Saturn and the sun. Probably a bit too chilly for most.
There’d be plenty of room, though. It’s three times the size of Jupiter, meaning it’s about 3,900 times the size of Earth.
Enjoy the images!
While it would be mind-bogglingly cool if the above photo were real, that’s actually a conceptual drawing of what NASA scientists think the area looks like. They know their space dust, though, so it’s probably pretty good.
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