Telescopes Capture First Images of Alien Planets

Nov. 13, 2008 -- Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system.

The images show four likely planets that appear as specks of white that are nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed astronomers. But it is evidence of the existence of something far more cosmic than a blurry dot.

"It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and potentially life out there," said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, one of two teams of out-of-this-solar system photographers.

None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable, and Macintosh said it's only a matter of time before "we get a dot that's blue and Earthlike."

The two groups of astronomers -- one using the Hubble Space Telescope and the other using two ground telescopes -- have captured images of the exoplanets, which are what scientists call planets that don't circle our sun. Both studies were being published in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

In the past 13 years, scientists have discovered more than 300 planets outside our solar system, but they have done so indirectly, by measuring changes in gravity, speed or light around stars.

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NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said the actual photos are important. He compared it to a hunt for elusive elephants: "For years we've been hearing the elephants, finding the tracks, seeing the trees knocked down by them, but we've never been able to snap a picture. Now we have a picture."

There are disputes about whether these are the first exoplanet photos. Others have made earlier claims, but those pictures haven't been confirmed as planets or universally accepted yet. The photos released Thursday are being published in a scientifically prominent journal, but that still hasn't convinced all the experts. Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Harvard exoplanet hunter Lisa Kaltenegger both said more study is needed to confirm these photos are proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars.

Nevertheless, the new photos provide the best evidence so far, according to NASA and others. The Hubble team this spring compared a 2006 photo to one of the same body taken by Hubble in 2004. The scientists used that to show that this was an object orbiting a star -- making it less likely to be a dwarf star.