First image of extra solar planet

Cool. [Link]

The possible planet—a hot, young body (upper left) about eight times more massive than Jupiter—sits roughly 330 times as far from its host star as Earth is from the sun. The pair lies about 500 light-years from Earth.

In 2004 a European team took the first direct snapshot of a likely planet near a brown dwarf, a dim object that astronomers think is a type of failed star. But scientists have been able to "see" extrasolar planets near sunlike stars only by looking for their gravitational effects.

Now scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

(Related: "Three 'Super-Earths' Found Orbiting Sunlike Star" [June 16, 2008].)

The researchers note that they aren't sure whether the body is really a planet or some other type of planetlike object, and it remains to be seen if it is truly orbiting the star.