Astro-Image of the Day: Hubble Photographs Alien World!

This is huge, amazing, wowza! Today - November 13, 2008 - the Hubble Space Telescope took the first photograph of a planet orbiting another sun. The planet has a name - Fomalhaut b, because it orbits Fomalhaut - which I think should be much more interesting, considering the historic nature of its discovery. Fomalhaut b, which I'll call Super-Wowza-Planet FB! is only 25 light-years away, so if intelligent life inhabits this place, they've been listening to our radio broadcasts for generations.

Without further ado, here's the photo:


Click the image to see the story.

Just wow. If it weren't so late, I'd write more. Wow.

(I've been away from teh intarwebs for most of the day due to creating this "How to Make a Website" tutorial for my students [1/3 of it is only for KU people], taking a visiting scholar out to dinner for KU, attending his talk, and discussing his theories and more afterward over beer. A great day. But it meant that I only now saw the news.)

Did I mention wow? WOW!

Chris