Photo Captures Three Planets By Distant Sun

Astronomers have apparently taken "photographs" of three planets orbiting a star 130 lightyears away. Little is yet known about the planets, but at this rate, it'll mean we'll be able to take photos of the Vulcans from Earth before long.

The lead astronomer in my institute gave a talk yesterday about the other system, found on a star called Fo­mal­haut and which is only 25lys away. The funny thing is that the planet (obviously Jupiter class) orbits the star at a distance of 120 AU (1AU = the distance of Earth from the Sun ~8 light minutes).

And since this planetary system is very close to us, this means that such systems may be more common than we thought in the past! This in it's turn means that also Earth like systems may be more common! The next logical step is that life as know it (carbon based, using H2O etc) may be abundant in the galaxy!

I wonder what's going on with the SETI program... because if they wanted to send a signal and receive an answer within our lifetime then Fo­mal­haut would be a nice candidate. The bad thing is that it is way too young but it may have been colonized...

There are two more planets in our solar system.One is between mars and jupiter. The other one is past pluto.