Space

Image Of Planet 1200 Light Years Away Captured, Direct Imaging Shows Alien Life Proof, Astronomers Say

Michael Finn
First Posted: Jun 15, 2016 05:10 AM EDT

An alien planet that orbits a star 1,200 light years away from the Earth has been shown in a newly released photo. Based on reports, the possible planet looks like a brownish dot at the left of the bluish-white star CVSO 30, captured by the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

The CVSO 30c is yet to be confirmed as a planet following further observations and analysis. If the research finds it as such, the alien planet orbits the star at a distance of 660 astronomical units, therefore, completing an orbit per 27,000 years. Based on the study, one astronomical unit is the Earth-sun distance, or about 93 million miles, according to Daily Galaxy.

Meanwhile, astronomers have detected other potential planet, CVSO 30b orbiting around the same star in 2012 through "transit method" that probes the tiny brightness dips which happens when the orbiting planets cross the host stars. The two possible planets are gas giants, much like Saturn and Jupiter, but occupy different spaces. If found existing, CVSO 30b completes an orbit per 11 hours with only 0.008 astronomical units from the star.

Once confirmed that CVSO 30c is orbiting CVSO 30, it will the first star system to host short distance exoplanet that was discovered through the transit method as well as a strange exoplanet discovered by direct imaging.

The direct imaging method has been used to uncover a small number of alien planets, with the majority of the 3,300 confirmed alien planets being found through the transit method of NASA's Kepler space telescope. Nevertheless, some astronomers believe that direct imaging can become more beneficial in the future when technology improves, providing even the likelihood of any relevant proof of alien life.

The study about the discovery of the alien planet CVSO 30c that relied on the information gathered by the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and Keck Observatory in Hawaii, aside from the Very Large Telescope, will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Daily Galaxy reported.

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