WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- After eight years and repeated photographs of a nearby star in hopes of finding planets, astronomers, using Hubble space telescope, finally got the first visible-light snapshots of a planet outside our solar system.

    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 PiscisAustralis, or the "Southern Fish," a team of astronomers reported Thursday with their papers appearing in this week's journal Science.

    Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

    In 2004, Hubble produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of proto planetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

    Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

    Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

    Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. "Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says.

    "Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clampin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

    Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

U.S. launches probe to explore solar system's boundary

A view of the earth's solar system is shown on a giant screen at the all-digital planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California September 18, 2008. The planetarium show allows audiences to visit the Moon, Mars and extra-solar planets before returning to take a close look at Earth.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA successfully launched a spacecraft at 1:48 p.m. EDT (1748 GMT) on Sunday to image and map the farthest reaches of the solar system, according to NASA website.

    The IBEX (short for Interstellar Boundary Explorer) was launched aboard a Pegasus rocket, dropped from under the wing of an L-1011 aircraft flying over the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.  Full stroy

Hubble unveils colorful star birth region on 100,000th orbit

    WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- In commemoration of Hubble space telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth during its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.

    According to NASA's reports on Monday, Hubble peered into a small portion of the Tarantula nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away and is one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies. Full story

New Hubble images show galaxy collisions

This Hubble Space Telescope image, taken December 29, 2005 and released on October 2, 2007 shows giant star-forming nebula with massive young stellar clusters.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    WASHINGTON, April 24 (Xinhua) -- In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary on Thursday, the space agencies in U.S. and Europe released 59 new images of colliding galaxies.

    Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. The new bunch of pictures constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public, said NASA in a statement on Thursday. Full story

Hubble finds first organic molecule on exoplanet

    WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- NASA's Hubble space telescope has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star.

    This breakthrough is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our solar system, announced NASA in a statement posted Wednesday on its website. Full story