First image of an exoplanet

A convincing way of detecting new exoplanets is directly imaging them. The first planet to have shown its face to us is 2M1207b. This planet has 5 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits a brown dwarf at about 55 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. A large planet moving around its star in a big orbit is the ideal candidate to image directly. The system was imaged by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in 2004. Multiple planets have since been imaged by other telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope.