Chile is home to tall mountains on South America's west coast Space.com reported yesterday on a picture of a planet taken by the Very Large Telescope located in Chile. The European Southern Observatory's telescope, which was used to capture the picture, has made the first confirmed discovery of a planet orbiting another star. The research team that photographed the planet with its host star was led by Ralph Neuhaeuser of the Astrophysical Institute University Observatory (AIU). "The detection of the faint object near the bright star is certain," he told Space.com on Friday. The new image contains the star, GQ Lupi, with an orbiting planet. It is smaller than our sun , 70\% the size, and is located 400 light-years away from our solar system. The planet is nearly twice the size of Jupiter. Unlike our sun which is 4.6 billion years old, the GQ Lupi star is approximately 1 million years old and is considered very young for a star. The planet orbiting GQ Lupi is three times further out than Neptune 's orbit around our sun, and scientists estimate the orbiting period to be about 1,200 years. The planets wide orbiting distance from the GQ Lupi was an important element for enabling the photograph to be taken. The discovery will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy Astrophysics.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% External links Image at Space.com
Chile is home to tall mountains on South America's west coast reported yesterday on a picture of a planet taken by the Very Large Telescope located in Chile. The European Southern Observatory's telescope, which was used to capture the picture, has made the first confirmed discovery of a planet orbiting another star. The research team that photographed the planet with its host star was led by Ralph Neuhaeuser of the (AIU). "The detection of the faint object near the bright star is certain," he told Space.com on Friday. The new image contains the star, GQ Lupi, with an orbiting planet. It is smaller than our , 70\% the size, and is located 400 away from our solar system. The planet is nearly twice the size of Jupiter. Unlike our sun which is 4.6 billion years old, the GQ Lupi star is approximately 1 million years old and is considered very young for a star. The planet orbiting GQ Lupi is three times further out than 's orbit around our sun, and scientists estimate the orbiting period to be about 1,200 years. The planets wide orbiting distance from the GQ Lupi was an important element for enabling the photograph to be taken. The discovery will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% .
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External links Image at Space.com
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