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Published Online November 13, 2008
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1166609

Research Articles

Submitted on September 30, 2008
Accepted on November 5, 2008

Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light-Years from Earth

Paul Kalas 1*, James R. Graham 1, Eugene Chiang 2, Michael P. Fitzgerald 3, Mark Clampin 4, Edwin S. Kite 5, Karl Stapelfeldt 6, Christian Marois 7, John Krist 6

1 Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
2 Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.; Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
3 Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Science, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA.
4 Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
5 Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
6 MS 183-900, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
7 Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, Victoria, British Columbia V9E 2E7, Canada.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Paul Kalas , E-mail: kalas{at}astron.berkeley.edu

Fomalhaut, a bright star 7.7 parsecs (25 light-years) from Earth, harbors a belt of cold dust with a structure consistent with gravitational sculpting by an orbiting planet. Here, we present optical observations of an exoplanet candidate, Fomalhaut b. In the plane of the belt, Fomalhaut b lies about 119 astronomical units (AU) from the star and within 18 AU of the dust belt. Hubble Space Telescope observations separated by 1.73 years reveal counterclockwise orbital motion. Dynamical models of the interaction between the planet and the belt indicate that the planet’s mass is at most 3 times that of Jupiter; a higher mass would lead to gravitational disruption of the belt. The flux detected at 0.8 µm is also consistent with that of a planet with mass no greater than a few times that of Jupiter. The brightness at 0.6 µm and the lack of detection at longer wavelengths suggest that the detected flux may include starlight reflected off a circumplanetary disk, with dimension comparable to the orbits of the Galilean satellites. We also observe variability of unknown origin at 0.6 µm.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799.
C. Marois, B. Macintosh, T. Barman, B. Zuckerman, I. Song, J. Patience, D. Lafreniere, and R. Doyon (2008)
Science 322, 1348-1352
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)