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First Direct Photo of Exoplanet Confirmed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the say-cheese-guys dept.

An anonymous reader noted a report confirming the first ever exoplanet actually photographed from telescopes on earth. Every other exoplanet so far 'observed' has been done by measuring wobbles of stars pulled by planetary gravity. But this one is a photograph. And that's just plain cool.

9 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. As Wil Wheaton often says by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Damn, I love living in the future.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:As Wil Wheaton often says by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And I hate living in a pre-warp culture. Come on scientists. Invent a warp drive so instead of taking blurry images, we can send a camera to that distant planet and take a photo directly.

      I don't know. Maybe this is why aliens have never contacted us? Maybe they are stuck inside their local solar system, same as we are, and the distance between stars is just too big a hurdle to jump. I once read a Science story about humans that hopped on a giant ship and accelerated to llghtspeed to visit a star with an earthlike planet. The humans inboard only aged two years, but 150 years passed-away back home..... whole countries rose and fell during that timespan. Totally impractical way to explore.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    2. Re:As Wil Wheaton often says by chichilalescu · · Score: 4, Funny

      as a PhD student in physics, the interstellar travel mechanism closest to being theoretically possible that I've seen so far is the Infinite Improbability Drive.

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      new sig
  2. Photo dates from 2008 by mbone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The key word in the title is "confirmed." Readers may remember that there were 2 separate sets of planets photographed in papers published in 2008. Now, we are sure (not that there was much doubt) that one of them is truly orbiting its primary star.

  3. Adaptic optics FTW by OneAhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I see this as a big triumph of adaptic optics. This picture was not made by a space telescope, but by an earth-based one!

    1. Re:Adaptic optics FTW by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

      I see this as a big triumph of adaptic optics. This picture was not made by a space telescope, but by an earth-based one!

      Indeed, hope the liquid mirror option becomes practical and viable so we can achieve more amazing photographs and data like this. Although I have to wonder why they didn't use an orbiting satellite like Hubble to avoid Earth's atmosphere when photographing such an amazing thing. Have terrestrial adaptive optic solutions already caught up with orbiting satellites?

      --
      My work here is dung.
  4. Re:Because we can't see Venus at night.... by Buggz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is there some weird definition of "Alien" that I dont know of?

    Usually it means extra-terrestrial, but in this case they mean extra-solar (a word also used in the article). I'll assume the guy who came up with the headline is not the guy who wrote the article.

  5. Re:Because we can't see Venus at night.... by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Alien, in this context, = outside of our solar system. As in too far for you to take a picture.

    You are making quite an assumption about where the GP poster lives and is posting from. Beam me up dismiley!

  6. Other Direct Images of Exoplanets Exist by rwllama · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are several direct images of exoplanets available. Hubble took one of a planet around Fomalhaut, which was announced the same day that Keck announced three planets around HR 8799 (Nov 13, 2008). The next week, ESO announced a possible planet around Beta Pictoris, which has recently been confirmed. What these folks at Gemini are saying is that they announced a possible direct image earlier in 2008, which they have now confirmed, so theirs was really the first. It is a game of "who got the first direct image of a planet around another star?". It doesn't really matter, but it is very cool that we can now directly see not only the 8 planets in our solar system, but also at least 6 more in other solar systems. At some pivotal point in the near future we will have more pictures of planets outside our solar system than within it!