Z
zavvy
Guest
<b>Telescope Snaps Distant 'Planet'</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />Astronomers working in Chile think they may have taken the first direct image of a planet circling another star. <br /><br />The star, called 2M1207, is 230 light-years away and is very much smaller and fainter than our own Sun. <br /><br />The pictured companion is 100 times fainter still and tested the technical limits of the Yepun telescope. <br /><br />Astronomer Christophe Dumas said: "It is a strange feeling that it may indeed be the first planetary system beyond our own ever imaged." <br /><br />Benjamin Zuckerman, of the University of California, in Los Angeles, added: "If the candidate companion of 2M1207 is really a planet, this would be the first time that a gravitationally bound exoplanet has been imaged around a star or brown dwarf." <br /><br />And Anne-Marie Lagrange, from the Grenoble Observatory, France, said: "Our discovery represents a first step towards opening a new field in astrophysics: the imaging and spectroscopic study of planetary systems. <br /><br />"Such studies will enable astronomers to characterise the physical structure and chemical composition of giant and, eventually, terrestrial-like planets." <br /><br />At the limit <br /><br />The observations were made with the 8.2m Yepun unit, part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso) on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert. <br /><br />In April, a team of European and American astronomers used Yepun to detect a faint and very red point of light near the brown-dwarf star 2M1207. <br /><br />The star has a mass of about a few per cent of our Sun's mass and is not able to sustain nuclear fusion reactions in its core to produce energy in the same way as our Sun does. <br /><br />2M1207 is thought to be about eight million years old. The star is a member of the TW Hydrae stellar association. <br /><br />Working at the li