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Exoplanets: Seeing is Believing (3 of 9)

Caption: HR 8799 planetary system. An unprocessed Keck telescope color image from near-infrared J- (1.2 microns), H- (1.6 microns) and Ks-band (2.15 microns) data is shown (left panel) along with a color image of the system in the same bandpasses, but after processing. The planets (red dots) are located at 10:00 (b), 2:00 (c) and 5:00 (d) at respectively 70, 40 and 25 astronomical units (the average distance between the Earth and the Sun). Their masses, derived from their luminosity and estimated system age (60 million years), are respectively 7, 10 and 10 that of Jupiter. The speckled area near the image center is residual light from the host star.

Credit: Image courtesy of National Research Council Canada, via Science-AAAS

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