Extasolar Planet Fomalhaut b

The Hubble Space Telescope capture one of the first visible-light images of an extrasolar planet. The imaged planet circles the star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away. This unusual planet, called Fomalhaut b, follows a highly elongated orbit near the inner edge of a ring-like disk encircling the star, and is presently about 10 times farther from the star than Saturn is from the Sun.

The inset in the upper right is a composite image showing the planet's position during Hubble observations taken between 2004 and 2012. Astronomers have calculated that Fomalhaut b is in a 2,000-year-long, highly elliptical orbit. During its orbit, the planet swings as close to its star as 4.6 billion miles and as far as 27 billion miles from the star.

The white dot in the center of the image marks the star's location. The region around Fomalhaut's location is black because astronomers blocked out the star's bright glare so that the dim planet could be seen. These Hubble images were taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley, and SETI Institute)