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Exoplanets: Seeing is Believing (7 of 9)

Caption: First optical images of an extrasolar planet orbiting a star 25 light years from Earth. Fomalhaut b is 100 million times fainter than the star and sits just inside a vast dust belt circling the star. The discovery was made by blocking the glare from the bright star Fomalhaut using special instrumentation aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. Fomalhaut b orbits the star in a counterclockwise direction, completing a full orbit in approximately 870 years, A huge ring system around the planet that is reflecting light from the star could explain the unexpected brightness of Fomalhaut b. The mass of Fomalhaut b is estimated to be less than three times the mass of Jupiter

Credit: Image courtesy of Paul Kalas, University of California, Berkeley, via Science-AAAS

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