First-Ever Photo Of Alien Planet Finally Confirmed (PICTURE)

An image taken in 2008 by the Gemini Observatory has finally been confirmed to be the first direct image taken by a ground-based telescope of an "alien planet" (a planet outside our solar system).

As Geekosystem notes, "While we have images of other alien planets -- a.k.a. "exoplanets" -- such images have been composed via indirect means of observation, such as gravitational fluctuations, rather than as true photographs."

In 2008, astronomers snapped an image of the exoplanet, which is eight times the mass of Jupiter, "using visible light observations from telescopes on Earth," according to Space.com.

The planet is orbiting a star in the 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (or 1RXS 1609 for short) solar system, a part of the 5-million-year-old cluster of stars known as the Upper Scorpius Association, which is around 500 light-years away from earth.

Astronomer David Lafreniere, the leading researcher on the team that discovered the star, told Space.com that additional research was needed to confirm that the planet was indeed orbiting the star. "Without adaptive optics," Lafreniere admits,

we would simply have been unable to see this planet [...] The atmosphere blurs the image of a star so much that it extends over and is much brighter than the image of a faint planet around it, rendering the planet undetectable. Adaptive optics removes this blurring and provides a better view of faint objects very close to stars.

The planet can be seen circled in red in the photo below. The star is shown in the center of the image. (via Discover)

Comments

[RasputinsLiver]

01:10 PM on 07/03/2010

Are their world leaders better than ours?

[MightyPheonix]

08:16 PM on 07/02/2010

Actually, this is NOT the first extrasolar planet photographed. It is the first one directly seen/photographed by a ground based telescope. The first one was back in 2004 (confirmed in 20005)...

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0515/
Others have been imaged since....
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/11/13/huge-exoplanet-news-items-pictures/

[dagmaclugh39]

05:00 PM on 07/02/2010

Whilst the Fundies have been salivating for the Apocalypse, I've been hoping we'll make alien contact before I croak. When that day comes--and it will, eventually--find my grave and holler. "E.T.'s for real!" LOUD!

[gratefulpezhead]

03:54 PM on 07/02/2010

Finally. Now I can sleep.

[cutelilfox]

03:38 PM on 07/02/2010

If we could go light speed it would only take us 500 years to get there. I hope there is lots of rest stops ;)

[JFoxCPT]

03:16 PM on 07/02/2010

500 light years. Eight times as big as Jupiter. 5 million year old star cluster.

I would have used exclamation points for each of them, but given what is really out there,
this "alien planet," amazing as it is, is like finding a button under a sofa.

[wizegeye]

03:15 PM on 07/02/2010

Are there any jobs on this exoplanet?

[PKelley]

03:48 PM on 07/02/2010

Ha! That's funny wizegeye...I LOL'd! : )

[blueballs]

02:58 PM on 07/02/2010

Oh great. Something more for Arizona to worry about

[ncspartan]

03:02 PM on 07/02/2010

Ok, that's pretty funny.

[Matt Osborne]

03:12 PM on 07/02/2010

Fanned.

[Hitchcockcameo]

02:44 PM on 07/02/2010

So these 'astronomers' used an adaptive optics 'trick' to sift the light data to support a predetermined outcome. I call B.S. Didn't climategate prove scientists can't use 'tricks' anymore?

[hark]

02:55 PM on 07/02/2010

There was no climate gate and obviously you don't understand the science involved, so why don't you admit you don't understand the technique, rather than proclaim it bogus? Or is that just how you righties operate? When you don't understand something, and there is an awful lot you don't understand, you put your heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist.

[Vitorio]

03:13 PM on 07/02/2010

Actually they just shoot it.

[Heauxbeaux]

04:10 PM on 07/02/2010

I'm pretty sure Hitch was speaking tongue-in-cheek here.

HuffPo has all these new badges, but what they really need is a sarcasm button.

[MightyPheonix]

08:23 PM on 07/02/2010

Adaptive optics aren't a trick. It means the mirror in thstelescope is actually several smaller mirrors that work together, like lots of smaller telescopes, and each one can be adjusted to compensate for the distortions caused by the atmosphere. A laser is fired into the sky and the scope analyzes how that beam is distorted, and then adjusts the angles of the multiple mirrors to compensate for that distortion. The result is much sharper images, approaching that of current space based telescopes. It's no more a trick than wearing glasses is.

[JoeyDee2]

01:59 PM on 07/02/2010

Our Space Program is essentially dead. It can come back but our entire civilization needs a reset. Forget the "evolved sensibility and values" of the Star Trek mythology. It makes one think of an ending line in one of Hemingway's novels: "Isn't it pretty to think so." As a kid in the 1950s, they told us in school that by now we'd have colonies on Mars if not farther out in the solar system.

I live not far from the Kennedy Space center. I have a close friend who has never been so we're going in a couple of weeks and the spirit of the visit is something like, "may she rest in peace."

We've turned to "Inner Space" with technology and 24/7 addictive gadgetry. Cell phone/texting/twitter "zombie-ism" is real and I think it's a Trojan horse. Instead of exploring the "final frontier," we can can all tweet. Or does that make us a nation of twits?

[marianproletarian]

02:54 PM on 07/02/2010

What is the point of space exploration? I'm glad we don't have colonies on mars, and I'll be even more glad when they stop spending money on exploring and polluting space. Can't we just concentrate on ruining our own planet before we start on the rest of the universe. Really, though, we should be spending all that energy and $ on figuring out how to save the planet we're on.

[JoeyDee2]

03:03 PM on 07/02/2010

There's a point but presently our species is too primitive to embrace it and yes there are too many pressing problems here now like, as you point out, saving our own planet. Whether or not we're even capable of that remains to be seen.

[quovadiszero]

03:14 PM on 07/02/2010

When you run out of raw materials to support all these people on this planet,you will figure it out, it will happen to your great,great grandkids,but lets not think too far ahead.

[Forester]

02:58 PM on 07/02/2010

I was born in the year of Sputnik, and so grew up in the Space Age. We did learn a great deal about the actual costs and feasibility of these early exploration and colonization fantasies. We were applying 19th century concepts to something exponentially larger in scale - and the costs in dollars and time made those concepts obsolete. The Space Race was basically a thinly veiled battle of the Cold War. Without repairing Lifeboat Earth, any future technical capabilities to attempt those early dreams of space travel and off-earth life won't ever happen. We also have to consider the ethics of the impacts we can have of other worlds. You only need to look at the piles of trash on Mt Everest to get a sense of that.

[marianproletarian]

04:01 PM on 07/02/2010

Excellent post

[nexxtep54]

01:31 PM on 07/02/2010

an "alien planet" (a planet outside our solar system). Better get started on a wall to block it out.

[dave1111]

02:56 PM on 07/02/2010

Rand wants an under space electric fence.

[WeCanDoMore]

12:59 PM on 07/02/2010

Planet inhabitants privacy violated by photo

[WeCanDoMore]

01:01 PM on 07/02/2010

above posted in error -

[gunnergoz]

11:19 AM on 07/02/2010

The Tea Partyers will doubtless decry this discovery and demand the cessation of all stellar research lest it encourage more illegals from alien planets.

[Occam123]

10:53 AM on 07/02/2010

Planet Claire has pink air
All the trees are red
No one ever dies there
No one has a head

[nootrope]

10:37 AM on 07/02/2010

This is why the republican fundies want to kill things like the Hubble telescope. It's only a matter of time before we find life somewhere else, and then their whole spiel is blown to shreds.

[pyro]

11:24 AM on 07/02/2010

Why would their "spiel" be blown to shreds? All they would do is deny it. Like they deny everything else true and logical. When they don't like somethning that "is", they just deny it. Then, in their minds, it "isn't. Like evolution, hunger in america, goverment can work for the good of the population, so on and so forth.

It's a unique trait. I think maybe it's the Neandrthal gene. Progressives, liberal, and true Dems, just can't do it. We can't deciever ourselves and make it stick. Repubs, conservs can. (And do it dayly, with the help of Fake News Corp.)

[sacto92]

12:09 PM on 07/02/2010

It's not the Republicans that are trying to kill our space program.

[nootrope]

12:35 PM on 07/02/2010

I said the republican fundies. Reading is fundamental.