"Hubble takes first image of possible planet around another star and finds a runaway world." That was the title of a headline-making press release issued by NASA 13 months ago. At a space agency briefing in May 1998, astronomer Susan Terebey of the Extrasolar Research Corp. in Pasadena, Calif., unveiled Hubble Space Telescope images that she said might show a planet born to a pair of stars 450 light-years from Earth (SN: 6/6/98, p. 357). Although astronomers roundly criticized NASA for highlighting an extremely tentative finding, the stakes were admittedly high. The images could go down in history as the first ever of a planet outside the solar system.
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机译:“哈勃拍摄了第一颗围绕另一颗恒星的行星的图像,并发现了一个失控的世界。”那是13个月前NASA发布的头条新闻稿的标题。在1998年5月的一次航天局简报中,位于加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳市Extrasolar Research Corp.的天文学家苏珊·特雷比(Susan Terebey)展示了哈勃太空望远镜的图像,她说这可能显示出一颗行星是由距地球450光年的一对恒星诞生的(SN :98年6月6日,第357页)。尽管天文学家批评NASA强调了一项极具试验性的发现,但所涉风险却很高。这些图像可能是历史上最早的太阳系外行星。
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