Back in September of 2004, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Paranal Observatory, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and, more specifically, the NACO component, believed that for the first time we have managed to photograph a planet outside our solar system.

A couple weeks ago, Hubble helped to confirm this. In April, Hubble will look again, to make sure it’s actually orbiting the star…

It’s a little hard to be certain that we’re seeing a planet, when we look so far out – and can see mostly only very, very bright stars. Smaller planets, emitting no light of their own, disappear against the blackness of space.

We only can imagine that planets are orbiting other stars, by watching a star slowly wobble, as the gravitational forces of its celestial children, trapped in orbit, pull upon the star as they revolve endlessly around it.

But now, it looks like we have have photographic evidence.

Over 220 light years away is a brown dwarf star named 2MASSWJ1207334-393254 (or 2M1207 for short). It’s very young – only around 8 million years old. As a brown dwarf star, it doesn’t have enough mass to ignite a thermonuclear reaction at its core – oh, it burns lithium and deuterium for a while, just like any proper star – but then it just stops – still glowing warmly from its initial formation, and continues to cool over time.

But 2M1207 seems to have a companion orbiting it, about 1/3 again as far as Pluto orbits our sun, with a mass approximately 1.5 times larger than our planet Jupiter. Still in its formation, this planet’s temperature is a toasty 1,800 degrees F. We can see this planet because the brown dwarf is, well, sub-stellar. Not so bright. Oh, and this planet has water molecules.

But enough talk… here’s the pretty picture. Most likely the first true picture we humans have ever taken of another planet outside our little neighborhood.

And to think, we’re letting poor Hubble die…