Astronomers are excited about a new image which may be the first picture taken of a planet orbiting a star similar to our own Sun (download the scientific paper as a PDF here). If it is a planet though, it’s very different to our pale blue dot:
Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight (8) times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the sun at only about 30 times the Earth-sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the sun, but is much younger.
So don’t get too excited about a twin-Earth out there – this thing orbits waaaay out from it’s own Sun, and is likely only 5 million years old (time enough for a Creationist God to fill it with life though, surely!). As Phil Plait points out though, it does has some interesting ramifications for our own Solar System – we could possibly have more planets orbiting at large distances from the Sun.
But no, the Bad Astronomer did not say Planet X…
