Images: Hubble observes planet orbiting another star

From images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, for the first time astronomers have spotted a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system.

The planet, Fomalhaut b, maintains an orbit around the star Fomalhaut and has three times the mass of Jupiter.

"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," said Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley.

Photo by NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

Caption by Andy Smith