New Planets

Astronomers released images of two possible planets in other star systems left week. At left is b Centauri, a star system about 325 light-years away in Centaurus. The system consists of two stars (at left, masked out to prevent their glare from overpowering the planet). Combined, they are roughly six times as massive as the Sun. The planet, at lower right, orbits at about 100 times the distance between the Sun and Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. (The object at upper right is a background star.) At right is BD+1417B, an object orbiting a star about 146 light-years away. The object appears to be 10 to 20 times the mass of Jupiter, so it could be either a giant planet or a small brown dwarf, which is bigger than a planet but not heavy enough to shine as a true star. It orbits at about 1,600 times the Earth-Sun distance or more than 40 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto. The object was captured in infrared light. The green spike at bottom is the glare of its star. [ESO/Janson et al.; Backyard Worlds/Leopold Gramaize]