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The image is a composite. 2M1207b orbits the brown dwarf from almost twice as far as Neptune does from the sun, but in the image, the planet appears positioned close to its star. The data used to capture it comes from three near-infrared exposures in different wavebands. It's a technique used to produce images for public consumption, but more importantly, to locate exoplanets around stars. That's because infrared data lessens the huge brightness difference between a star and a planet, making the latter easier to find.It was produced using the 27-foot (8.2 meters) Yepun telescope — part of the Very...

Astronomers have directly observed an extrasolar planet for the first time, but are at a loss to explain what they see. More than 130 planets have been detected orbiting stars other than our own, the Sun. But because the stars far outshine the planets, all of the planets were detected indirectly - by how much they made their host stars wobble or dim, for example. Now, astronomers say they are almost certain they have snapped an actual image of an extrasolar planet. It was first seen at infrared wavelengths with the Very Large Telescope in Chile in April 2004, and...

A reddish speck photographed near a dim and distant star last year is indeed a planet, about five times the mass of Jupiter, an international team of astronomers is reporting today. They say the results bolster their claim, put forward last fall, that this image was the first of a planet orbiting a star outside the solar system. The planet, about 230 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra, orbits a kind of failed star known as a brown dwarf at a distance of at least five billion miles, twice as far as icy Neptune is from our own Sun....