* Astronomy

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Fomalhaut

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In 2006, astronomer Alice Quillen of the University of Rochester predicted that a planet of a particular size and orbit must lie within the dust of a nearby star. That planet has now been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it only the second planet ever imaged after an accurate prediction. The only other planet seen after an accurate prediction was Neptune, discovered more than 160 years ago.

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Discussing Fomalhaut

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Fomalhaut b

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First pictures taken of planet outside the solar system: Fomalhaut b
Astronomers have succeeded in taking the first visible light snapshot of a planet outside our home solar system.
The Hubble space telescope photographed the planet Fomalhaut b after researchers spent eight years attempting to pinpoint it.
The planets existence had been known since 2005 because its gravity had shaped the inner edge of a dust belt around its parent star, but it was only in May this year that researchers were able to pick it out in photographs taken by Hubble in 2004 and 2006.

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RE: Fomalhaut

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Look southeast on any clear evening. In autumn, a solitary star brightens an otherwise empty area of sky. That's Fomalhaut, a star with an odd name but an interesting story.
Fomalhaut (FOAM'-a-lot) is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (PIE'-sis aw-STRY'-nuss), the Southern Fish. Piscis Austrinus is one of several "watery" autumn constellations. Above it are Capricornus the Sea Goat and Aquarius the Water Carrier. And to its left and upper left, respectively, are Cetus the Whale and Pisces the Fishes.

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Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have released a rather remarkable Hubble image of a ring of dust around star Fomalhaut, described by New Scientist as resembling "the Great Eye of Sauron".

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A young star's strange elliptical ring of dust likely heralds the presence of an undiscovered Neptune-sized planet, says a University of Rochester astronomer in the latest Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Stars in the early stages of life are surrounded by dust clouds that thin out and dissipate as the star reaches maturity, becoming rings in their final stages. One star, however, has a dust ring that has long puzzled astronomers because it is not centred around the star as usual. Instead, the ring is elliptical, with the parent star off to one side.

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Blobrana · L

Fomalhaut is a bright, young, star, a mere 25 light-year trip from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus.

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Earlier infrared observations identified a torus of cold material surrounding the nearby star but the panels above detail the sharpest ever visible light-image of the stars dusty debris ring, recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's ACS camera.
Overwhelming glare from the star is masked by an occulting disk in the cameras coronagraph.
The off-centre ring with a sharp inner boundary is taken to be strong evidence of a massive planet orbiting far from Fomalhaut, shaping and maintaining the ring's inner edge.
Starting 133 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances) from Fomalhaut, the dusty ring itself is likely a larger, younger analogy of our own Kuiper Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of icy bodies.