http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2453
A
team of European and American astronomers has taken what may be the first image of a planet outside our solar system. In April, the team detected a faint energy source close to a brown dwarf designated 2MASSWJ1207334-393254, or 2M1207.
Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets, and astronomers usually set the line dividing the two classes at about 13 Jupiter masses. Unlike a star, a brown dwarf lacks the mass to produce energy by nuclear fusion; instead, it produces heat as a by-product of its gradual contraction.
What's causing all the excitement, however, is an object five magnitudes, or 100 times, fainter than the brown dwarf, imaged by a heat-sensitive detector. A spectrum of the object taken in June showed the presence of water molecules. A team led by Gael Chauvin of the European Southern Observatory made the discovery using the Very Large Telescope, which is located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
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