Professor Hanington`s Speaking of Science: Around another sun
(World News Science)

Last week, the first image of another planetary system was shown to the world. Taken at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the photo shows a remote solar family, much like our own, complete with two giant exoplanets circling the young Sun-like star TYC 8998-760-1. Located 310 light years away in the southern constellation of Musca, (The Fly) the picture was captured by an exotic instrument called SPHERE, a sensitive device specifically designed to detect exoplanets using advanced processing techniques. This is the only time astronomers have directly observed more than one planet orbiting a star situated outside of our own system. The rings seen around the star in the picture are...