The first-ever pictures of planets outside our solar system were released today:Yeah, it doesn't look like much to me, either (by the way, the star is in the middle and the planet is a white speck inside the small box--the larger box is a magnification). Regardless, it's an important achievement:
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.
Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish."
Fomalhaut is burning hydrogen at such a furious rate through nuclear fusion that it will burn out in only 1 billion years, which is 1/10th the lifespan of our sun. This means there is little opportunity for advanced life to evolve on any habitable worlds the star might possess.
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