See that little yellow dot above and to the left of that sun? The star is 1RSX J160929.1-210524, and the dot is around 8 times the size of Jupiter. It’s a planet. And the first one to be directly photographed. Not only is it rather large, but it’s damned far from the star, some 300 AU (1 AU=distance from Earth to the Sun).
It’s the first visible light photograph of an extrasolar planet. It was spotted in 2008, but it took until now to confirm that it was indeed another planet.
That’s so freaking cool!
[via Space]