Seeing and Believing: 15 Years of Exoplanet Images

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 13, 2023

First there was a gloriously dusty disk. Then the traceable tracks of "exocomets." But 15 years ago this fall, the star system Beta Pictoris yielded one of the most iconic pictures in astrophysics: a direct image of a planet orbiting another star. The young, bright star, some 63 light-years distant and visible to the naked eye, all but overwhelmed the faint light of the planet. When astron