NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of a planet outside our solar system for the first time ever in visible light. The planet, Fomalhaut b, orbits the star Fomalhaut which is found in the constellation Piscis Australis, also knowns as the ‘Southern Fish.’ The star is located 25 light-years away from our solar system, all according to NASA. That is, it would take you 250 years to travel there at the ‘limit’ of Newtonian physics, not that we are able to travel at anything close to such speeds. I don’t know if you wanna go there anyway; a Fomalhaut b year is 872 Earth years. Of course depending on the seasons there, it would be nice to be born in the summer and never to worry about the winter. But I guess every new year party is quite fun as well! Boring, maybe, to never celebrate birthdays; everyone on Fomalhaut b is zero years! (That is, everyone with something close to a human life span.) NASA hopes that future technologies can check for water vapor, something that could indicate life. As far as I understand, the planet is quite big; it’s three Jupiter masses (which adds up to approximately 950 Earth masses), but of course the size depends on its composition (Jupiter is mostly hydrogen).
