The first direct image of planets orbiting a star 300 light-years away.

An international team of astronomers has obtained the first direct image of two planets orbiting a sun-like star 300 light-years from Earth, an extraordinary feat in itself.

In the picture, these two planets look like two bright dots around their main star.

It should be noted that the speed of light in space is 300,000 kilometers per second and the distance that light travels in space during one year is called "light year".

All the planets we have discovered so far outside the solar system, orbiting other stars, have all been discovered on the basis of fluctuations in the light coming from our main star or irregularity in the movement of this star. ۔ This is the first time that a direct image of the planets around another star has been obtained.

According to experts, the star around which these planets have been discovered is still very "young" and "only" 20 million years ago. The star has no official name but is numbered TYC 8998-760-1 in the astronomical catalog. And it is located in a cluster called "Muska" (fly). That is, we can say that the solar system is still in its infancy, just as our solar system was 4.6 billion years ago.

These two planets are very heavy, one of which is 6 times larger than Jupiter, the heaviest planet in our solar system, while the other is 14 times larger than our Jupiter.

Experts have also discovered that the nearest planet is 160 astronomical units away from its star, while the farthest planet is orbiting at a distance of 320 astronomical units.

An astronomical unit (AU) refers to the average distance between the sun and the earth, which is about 150 million kilometers. For comparison, the planet Neptune in our solar system is about 30 astronomical units from our Sun, while Pluto is only 39 astronomical units away from the Sun.

The discovery was made with the help of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is currently credited with being the "most powerful and sensitive visual telescope on Earth." Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the observatory is located in the remote Atacama Desert in Chile. It consists of four astronomical telescopes, each of which has a mirror diameter of 8.3 meters.

Of course, these binoculars can be used separately, but for clearer and better imaging of distant space objects, these binoculars are connected together in such a way that they all work together like a very large and very powerful astronomical telescope. Work

Full details of the discovery, published online in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that the global team that made the discovery included people from the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States. Experts were involved.