New planet imaged directly, closer to parent sun than ever before.

[n2doc]

Using new optics technology developed at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, an international team of astronomers has obtained images of a planet on a much closer orbit around its parent star than any other extrasolar planet previously found. The discovery, published online in Astrophysical Journal Letters, is a result of an international collaboration among the Steward Observatory, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, the European Southern Observatory, Leiden University in the Netherlands and Germany's Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy.


Installed on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, or VLT, atop Paranal Mountain in Chile, the new technology enabled an international team of astronomers to confirm the existence and orbital movement of Beta Pictoris b, a planet about seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, around its parent star, Beta Pictoris, 63 light years away.

At the core of the system is a small piece of glass with a highly complex pattern inscribed into its surface. Called an Apodizing Phase Plate, or APP, the device blocks out the starlight in a very defined way, allowing planets to show up in the image whose signals were previously drowned out by the star's glare.

"This technique opens new doors in planet discovery," said Phil Hinz, director of the UA's Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics at Steward Observatory. "Until now, we only were able to look at the outer planets in a solar system, in the range of Neptune's orbit and beyond. Now we can see planets on orbits much closer to their parent star."

more
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/10/15/planet.hunters.no.longer.blinded.light

[laconicsax]

1. Very cool! n/t

[tridim]

2. That's the first image of an exoplanet I've ever seen.

Are there others that have been imaged?

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Ask, and ye shall recieve...... (dial up warning...)

2M1207b
The red fuzzy: Technically a brown dwarf, so arguably not really a planet, but the first one imaged:


Fomalhaut b
First image of a planet around a sun-like star:


HR 8799 b,c & d
Family portrait: (there was some argument as to whether "d" was really a planet: IIRC, it is):


Edit to add:

GJ 758 b (and c?)


Beta Picoris b:


1RXS 1609 b:
(would have been the "first around a sun-like star" but it took a while to confirm)


GQ Lupi a & b:


Uncomfirmed is AB Pictoris b, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR_1845-6357">SCR 1845-6357b is just another brown dwarf. Meh. ;)

[tridim]

4. I did the same search as you apparently. :) Thanks.

I love the second image.

[txlibdem]

5. What. No StarGate?!?

eom