[RightWhale]

there is no instrument than can resolve the image of planets around other stars

I think it has been done, although the 'planet' would have to be a supermassive one, and probably on the borderline between gas giant and brown dwarf. Wasn't there an image published a few months ago? Just a dot of light, certainly no surface detail. It will be another 10 years before NASA has the instrument in space able to optically resolve extrasolar planetary detail.

[Spandau]

The Hubble Space Telescope was able to resolve the image of a star called Betelgeuse(sp). Betelgeuse is a red giant type of star in the constellation Orion. I think it's 1000x more massive than the Sun, and it's relatively close (40-50 light years). I believe this is the only image of anything outside our solar system that is more than a point of light. I would post it, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet. It's a historic photograph, but not much to look at.