Jamie Carter is a freelance journalist and regular Live Science contributor based in Cardiff, U.K. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners and lectures on astronomy and the natural world. Jamie regularly writes for Space.com, TechRadar.com, Forbes Science, BBC Wildlife magazine and Scientific American, and many others.
Where it is: about 170 light-years away in the constellation CentaurusWhy it's so special: A few decades ago, the idea that planets may exist around other stars was purely theoretical. But this image offered the first visual proof of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a star in a distant solar system. The shot, released 20 years ago this week, shows an exoplanet called 2M1207b orbiting a brown dwarf, called 2M1207.
This is like nothing in our solar system. The brown dwarf star is right on the boundary between a star and a planet, with a mass that's about 42 times less than the sun and 25 times greater than Jupiter. The planet, 2M1207b, is five times more massive than Jupiter.
Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter nowGet the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.The image is a composite. 2M1207b orbits the brown dwarf from almost twice as far as Neptune does from the sun, but in the image, the planet appears positioned close to its star. The data used to capture it comes from three near-infrared exposures in different wavebands.
It may have been the first, but 2M1207b was not the last world to be directly imaged. According to Las Cumbres Observatory, over 200 planets have since been discovered using direct imaging. A total of more than 5,600 alien worlds have been confirmed through various methods.
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