The planet in question is Beta Pictoris B, a planet located outside the solar system about 63.5 light years from Earth . It is a gas giant, even larger than Jupiter, orbiting a star similar to our Sun, in the southern constellation of Pictor .
The person responsible for this interesting photograph is none other than the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) instrument, which is part of the Gemini South 8-meter telescope, located in Cerro Pachón (Chile). The small white dot that is shown in the lower right part of the snapshot is precisely the exoplanet; the quivering circle in the center is therefore its star.
The importance of this photograph is that it is the best ever obtained directly from an extrasolar planet and has served to redefine the orbital period of the planet , which is 20.5 years. The exoplanet in question is quite young. Experts consider it to be less than 10 million years old and the star it orbits is about 12 million years old.
The finding has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
