The Monster of Pelageek

There are something over 150 known "extrasolar" planets, that is, planets orbiting stars other than our sun. They've been found, by and large, not by detecting them directly but by detecting their gravitational effect on the stars they orbit. Since the first confirmed discovery in 1995, discovery of planets has become something of a cottage industry in astronomy.

In fact, it's become so routine that the deal is no longer to find extrasolar planets but to actually see them. And now, a team of astronomers lead by Gael Chauvin at the European Southern Observatory has renewed its claim to be the first to do so.

New images taken of an object five times the mass of Jupiter confirm that it is a giant planet closely orbiting a distant star, an international team of astronomers reported. The team of European and American astronomers said this is the first time a planet outside of our solar system has been directly observed - a claim other scientists have also made,

reported AP on Saturday. The team first made the claim in September, identifying it as a planet circling a so-called "failed star" known as a brown dwarf about 200 light years from Earth. (Note that contrary to the first reference at the link and as explained in the others, Jupiter is not a "small brown dwarf." It is not nearly massive enough.)

But questions were raised by others who said it may have been a background star and the team admitted more observations were needed.

Meanwhile, earlier this month[, notes Space.com,] Ralph Neuhaeuser of the Astrophysical Institute & University Observatory said his team had made the first confirmed picture of a planet around another star called GQ Lupi, some 400 light-years away.

In that case, the object photographed was clearly gravitationally bound to the star - but there was still suspicion it was a brown dwarf, not a planet.

But now, the ESO team is back again

"Our new images show convincingly that this really is a planet, the first planet that has ever been imaged outside of our solar system," Chauvin said in a statement.

Added Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was part of the team: "I'm more than 99 percent confident." ...

[However,] Lynne Hillenbrand, an assistant professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, said the findings were intriguing, but cautioned against calling the object a planet.

"The claim of an object being a planet is subject to one's definition of planet and there are different camps on what that definition is," Hillenbrand said.

Another question is what constitutes being first. Suppose both these pictures are confirmed to be of planets but Neuhaeuser's team's is confirmed first. Are they first because it was the first confirmed - or is Chauvin's team's first because it was observed first? Lots - reputations, yes, but even more importantly who gets the grants for further research - will hang on that answer.