Shown here in the center are images of Fomalhaut b taken in 2004 and 2006. In the 2004 Hubble images, astronomers spotted a ring of protoplanetary debris about 21.5 billion miles across indicating the likelihood of finding a hidden planet.
"The lesson for exoplanet hunters is follow the dust," said team member Mark Clampin, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Photo by NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Caption by Andy Smith
