Mars | Engineering | Sentient Machine
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ALT This is a visualization of the orange-colored planet, Mars, with visible crater-like and dark-purple features scattered across its surface. In the background, the blackness of space beyond Mars is littered with tiny, white, sparkling stars. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
ALT This composite image shows an exoplanet (a red spot on the lower left), orbiting the brown dwarf 2M1207 (center), seen as a much larger white-blue orb. This photo of the exoplanet 2M1207b is based on three near-infrared exposures (in the H, K and L wavebands) with the NACO adaptive-optics facility at the 8.2-m VLT Yepun telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory. Credit: ESO In 2004, the first exoplanet imaged directly was 2M1207b, four times more massive than Jupiter, by European Southern Observatory astronomers using the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile. This composite image shows the exoplanet formally known as 2MASS J12073346-3932539 b (the red spot on the lower left), orbiting a brown dwarf 2M1207 (center). It orbits the failed star at a distance 55 times greater than the Earth to the Sun, nearly twice as far as Neptune is from the Sun.
