Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Alien World's First Glimpse.
A team of scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope captured the 1st visible-light snap of a planet orbiting other star. last November 14, came the report of a related breakthrough using the ground-based Gemini & Keck observatories in Hawaii, with which astronomers captured the first infrared image of three planets orbiting a star. Later, one more exoplanet candidate was spotted in infrared — by the European Southern Observatory’s Big Telescope—orbiting the hot, bright star Beta Pictoris.
Astronomers’ new discovered success at imaging planets trillions of miles away comes with the use of more powerful telescopes, advanced optics techniques, & software that compares images to minimize background starlight. Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, tells that changes in the kinds of stars astronomers are seeking out—stars 49 to 99 percent more massive than our sun— may also factor into the number of exo-planet sightings. Spotting an Earth - like planet around a sun like star remains beyond current technology, but it seems much closer .