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What it is : exoplanet 2M1207b
Where it is : about 170 easy - years aside in the configuration Centaurus
This first planet outside of our solar system (right) was found orbiting a brown dwarf, dubbed 2M1207 (center).
When it was shared : Sept. 10 , 2004
Why it ’s so special : A few decades ago , the idea that planet may exist around other stars was strictly theoretic . But this double offered the first visual cogent evidence of a Jupiter - like planet orbiting a whiz in a distantsolar system . The shot , released20 years ago this week , shows an exoplanet visit 2M1207b orbit a brown dwarf , call 2M1207 .
This is like nothing in oursolar organisation . The dark-brown dwarf star is right onthe boundary between a star and a planet , with a mass that ’s about 42 clock time less than the sun and 25 time bully than Jupiter . The major planet , 2M1207b , is five time more massive than Jupiter .
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" fall in the rather unusual dimension of the 2M1207 system , the elephantine major planet most believably did not forge like the planets in our solar system,“Gaël Chauvin , an stargazer at the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) and drawing card of the squad of uranologist who conducted the subject field , say when the image was released . " or else , it must have form the same style our sun formed , by a one - step gravitative collapse of a cloud of gas and junk . "
The paradigm is a composite . 2M1207b orbits the brown dwarf from almost twice as far as Neptune does from the Dominicus , but in the image , the planet appears positioned close to its star . The information used to catch it comes from three near - infrared exposures in different wavebands . It ’s a technique used to acquire images for public economic consumption , but more importantly , to locate exoplanets around stars . That ’s because infrared data lessen the immense luminance remainder between a champion and a planet , cause the latter wanton to come up .
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It was produced using the 27 - invertebrate foot ( 8.2 meters ) Yepun scope — part of the Very Large Telescope — at the ESO ’s Paranal Observatory , located 8,645 feet ( 2,635 m ) above ocean level in the Atacama Desert in Chile .
It may have been the first , but 2M1207b was not the last world to be instantly imaged . concord toLas Cumbres Observatory , over 200 satellite have since been discovered using direct imaging . A sum ofmore than 5,600 exotic worldshave been affirm through various methods .
For more sublime space images , suss out out ourSpace Photo of the Week archives .
