Extra! Extra!Extrasolar planet observed!

"New images taken of an object with 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 [that might yet mean this 'first-ever' discovery is actually the second].

"The team first spotted the object last year as a faint reddish speck of light circling a brown dwarf — or failed star — 225 light-years away from Earth near the constellation Hydra. At the time, scientists guessed the faint light was a planet, but said further observation was needed.

"Refined images taken earlier this year by the Very Large Telescope in northern Chile show two separate objects bound by gravity moving together according to Gael Chauvin, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, who led the team.

"Chauvin's team estimated the mass of the object, called 2M1207b, by measuring its brightness. They found that it was five times the mass of Jupiter and that it orbited a brown dwarf, known as 2M1207A, at a distance nearly twice as far as Neptune is from the sun."