November 14, 2018

Beta Pictoris b (Image ESO/Lagrange/SPHERE consortium)

ESO has published a time-laps composition of images showing the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b while orbiting its star. It was discovered in 2008 using the NACO instrument mounted on the VLT in Chile and the team led by Dr. Anne-Marie Lagrange who discovered it kept on studying it some years later using the SPHERE instrument, which in the meantime was also mounted on the VLT. The researchers lost sight of it when it approached its star’s halo too closely to be resolved by any current instrument but got visible again in September 2018.