Telescope takes first image of planet outside our solar system
Saturday, April 2, 2005 Space.com reported yesterday on a
picture of a planet taken by the Very Large Telescope located in
Chile. The European Southern Observatory's telescope, which was
used to capture the picture, has made the first confirmed
discovery of a planet orbiting another star. Scientists have
been trying to locate planets outside our own solar system for
nearly 10 years. Inferences of nearly 150 planets in other solar
systems have been observed so far by using instruments and
measurements that only suggest the existence of another planet.
Until now, no planet has been confirmed by the means of a
photographed image. There was, months earlier, another team of
scientists who took pictures of what might be another planet,
but that image remains controversial because it shows what may
be an even more distant object instead. The research team that
photographed the planet with its host star was led by Ralph
Neuhaeuser of the Astrophysical Ins