First Pictures of a Planet in the Fomalhaut System

Extrasolar planets are being discovered by astronomers routinely these days. It's now a fact that out galaxy is rich with planets of different sizes and distances from their parent stars. It's just like what science fiction writers have envisioned all this time. But while we used to only read about such discoveries and pictures of the new planets are always unavailable.

Now, for the first time, astronomers have shown pictures of a planet (Fomalhaut b) of the Fomalhaut (Arabic for "mouth of fish") system. The picture of the star, which is surrounded by a ring of gas that looks like the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings movies, was taken way back in 2006, but the discovery of Fomalhaut b was released only on November 13, 2008.

It is one of the first visible-light images of a planet that's 25 light years from our Sun. The camera used to capture it is mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomer Paul Kalas and his team at the University of California in Berkeley, were responsible for the images.

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Hubble Shoots Ceres and Vesta to Prepare for Dawn

There are photographs of asteroids Ceres (left) and Vesta (right), two of the most popular asteriods and much viewed by amateur astronomers in the solar system apart from Eros. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has taken their photographs to help prepare for the coming mission of the Dawn spacecraft, which will be the first satellite to tour a dwarf planet. To see a movie clip of Vesta rotating, click here.

Dwarf Planet Eris Larger Than Pluto

Poor Pluto. It appears that a dwarf planet discovered in the Kuiper belt by Mike Brown of Caltech in 2005 is really larger than Pluto. Still, it has been classified as a dwarf planet, which means it is not quite a planet. It has a satellite called Dysnomia. The picture above is an artist's conception of Eris and Dysnomia relative to the Sun and a field of stars.