Capturing an image of extrasolar planets is difficult: the celestial bodies are very far away, relatively small and drown in the light of their parent star. Despite this, a team of researchers, including several from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, has successfully captured an image of a “super-Jupiter” which orbits the star Kappa Andromedae. The gas giant has roughly 13 times the mass of Jupiter, while the parent star has 2.5 times the mass of the Sun. This planet probably formed in a similar way to ordinary, lower-mass planets: in a “protoplanetary disk” of gas and dust. This makes the planet an important test case for current models of how planets are born.
