Astronomers Spot Planet Circling a Distant Star
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
European and American astronomers think that they have for the first time directly observed a planet orbiting a distant star. The faint point of light seems to be a planet orbiting a young brown dwarf called 2M107 about 230 light-years from Earth.
The putative planet appears to have about five times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the brown dwarf star at about twice the distance of Neptune from our sun. It emits less than 1% of the amount of light given off by its star, the team said Friday.
