Explanation:
Fomalhaut
(sounds like "foam-a-lot") is a bright, young,
star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction
of the constellation
Piscis Austrinus.
In this sharp composite from the
Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut's
surrounding ring of dusty debris is imaged in detail, with
overwhelming glare from the star masked by an occulting disk in the
camera's coronagraph.
Astronomers
now identify, the tiny point of light in the small box at the right
as a planet about 3 times the mass of Jupiter orbiting
10.7 billion miles from the star (almost 14 times the Sun-Jupiter
distance).
Designated Fomalhaut b, the massive planet
probably shapes and maintains the ring's relatively sharp inner edge,
while the ring itself is likely a larger,
younger analog of our own
Kuiper
Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of
icy bodies.
The Hubble data represent the
first visible-light image of a planet circling another star.
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