Fomalhaut B: The Mote in Sauron's Eye
Sauron's Eye Hubble images taken in 2012 confirm that Fomalhaut b is a planet, and an unusual one at that. NASA and ESAThe controversial exoplanet Fomalhaut b has been spotted, and it's even stranger than we'd thought. In 2008, an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope showed the world one of the first directly imaged extrasolar planets, 25 light years away in a system resembling the all-seeing Eye of Sauron, in the giant disk of debris surrounding a young star called Fomalhaut. But the instrument used to see the purported planet, Fomalhaut b, broke in 2007, and the team involved in the discovery couldn't replicate their results. The next time they saw Fomalhaut b, using a different instrument, it didn't appear to be in orbit around the star, and some scientists dismissed the exoplanet discovery. But a few months ago, other telescopes also spotted Fomalhaut b. With...