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Space

NASA to unveil image of a planet in another solar system

Hubble telescope
Hubble Space Telescope   
May 27, 1998
Web posted at: 10:21 p.m. EDT (0221 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first actual image of a planet outside our own solar system, NASA said Wednesday.

The picture will be debuted at a press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. EDT Thursday at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington.

NASA says the image shows a planet that is 2-to-3 times the mass of the Jupiter and is located near a newly-forming binary star system. Such a systems consists of two stars very close together and orbiting each other.

NASA says the finding has to be further substantiated and confirmed, but if it all holds up this will be the most important discovery to date made by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomers first discovered extra-solar planets several years ago, but the evidence of them was indirect. Astronomers couldn't see the planets themselves, but concluded they were there because a planet's gravitational pull can make the star it orbits wobble.

The image to be unveiled Thursday will be the first of an actual extra-solar planet.

 

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