51 Eridani b: a 20 Million Year old Jupiter Analog Found Through Direct Imaging

One of the best ways to learn how our solar system evolved is to look to younger star systems in the early stages of development. Now, a team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-like planet within a young system that could serve as a decoder ring for understanding how planets formed around our sun.

The new planet, called 51 Eridani b, is the first exoplanet discovered by the Gemini Planet Imager, a new instrument operated by an international collaboration headed by Bruce Macintosh, a professor of physics at Stanford University and a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. It is a million times fainter than its parent star and shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet, which should yield additional clues as to how the planet formed.

The results are published in the current issue of Science.

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