First Image of Extrasolar Planet Confirmed

An anonymous reader writes "The year-long controversy about whether the European Southern Observatory had indeed captured the first picture of an extrasolar planet has apparently been resolved. Journal publication today of a fuzzy image of this Jupiter-sized, extrasolar planet led Christophe Dumas, a member of the discovery team, to say enthusiastically: 'The thrill of seeing this faint source of light in real-time on the instrument display was unbelievable. Although it is surely much bigger than a terrestrial-size object, it is a strange feeling that it may indeed be the first planetary system beyond our own ever imaged.'"

Comments

Re:"Small" correction

[mbrother]

Careful astronomers don't make this mistake, but we're talking about results massaged by PR people and the press. I've been through that experience, and it makes me always go to the journal article or preprint to determine what they're actually talking about.

Personally, I would never use "size" for mass, and geometrical sizes are still ambiguous. Is a size a radius, surface area, or volume? Each of the three could be the answer under different circumstances.

The best estimates I recall are more like 80-82 Jupiter masses for fusion, a little bigger than 70. I remember being irritated with Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 for saying that if Jupiter were only "a little bigger" it would be able to have fusion processes and be a star. My little bigger above is for 10% bigger, not a factor of 80 times bigger. I don't think that's being picky, I think that's just Clarke being wrong in that case.