Astronomers Image Distant Planet Directly

European astronomers said they have obtained confirmed images of a planet beyond our own solar system.

The planet is about twice the size of Jupiter and orbits a star called GQ Lupi, thought to be a young version of the sun.

The astronomers — using images taken by the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii — have constructed an image of the extrasolar planet orbiting the star about 400 light-years away from Earth.

Because the planet is in a young solar system, it is relatively hot, which helped astronomers distinguish its reflected light from the glare emitted by its host star.

The planet also is about 100 times farther from its star than Earth is from the sun, which also helped the team to separate the two objects.

Astronomers have found more than 130 exoplanets over the past decade, but most have been detected by measuring gravitational wobbles they cause in their parent stars.