For almost a decade and a half, astronomers have been finding new planets orbiting distant stars — first a trickle and, more recently, a flood of alien worlds, with the tally now well above 400, and climbing every day. The vast majority of these so-called exoplanets have been "seen" only indirectly — by observing the gravitational tug they exert on their parent stars, for example, or in silhouette as they pass between their stars and our telescopes. Ideally, astronomers would love to see the planets themselves, in order to understand what they're made of, how they formed and perhaps whether the most Earthlike of the exoplanets might even harbor a primitive form of life. That sort of direct detection is finally starting to happen. In an upcoming paper in the Astrophysical Journal, three observers confirm that they've photographed a planet orbiting a Sun-like star known as 1RXS 1609, about 500 light-years, or nearly three quadrillion miles, from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2000787,00.html?hpt=T2
