Photo captures 3 planets by distant sun

The tech­nol­o­gy for pho­tograph­ing plan­ets in dis­tant so­lar sys­tems is mak­ing strides, as­tro­no­mers say, with new im­ages in­clud­ing one that shows three worlds around a young star.

As­t­ro­phys­i­cist C. Marois and col­leagues said they found the plan­ets—which appeared as tiny dots by the star HR 8799—using the Keck and Gem­i­ni North tele­scopes on Mau­na Kea in Ha­waii.

Be­fore now, as­tro­no­mers had re­ported pho­tograph­ing just one plan­et of a star oth­er than our sun. Oth­er de­tec­tions of such ob­jects had been done through stu­dy­ing their gravita­t­ional ef­fects rath­er than through im­ag­ing, which is dif­fi­cult be­cause the star­light tends to over­whelm any light from the plan­ets.

source: http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/081113_planet-image