After a year of studying images of a faint reddish speck near a brown dwarf star, a team of astronomers led by Gael Chauvin of the European Southern Observatory has been credited with the first image of a planet outside of our solar system.

The brown dwarf star 2M1207A is 170 light years from Earth. The reddish object recognized as a planet is now called 2M1207b. The planet orbits the star at a distance of 40 AUs (Astronomical Units). One Astronomical Unit is the distance from our sun to Earth, or about 93 million miles. Measurements taken of the planet indicated a spectrum showing water vapor. Water vapor indicates cool temperatures, too cool to be a companion star. The mass of the planet is about 5 Jupiters. Further measurements using the Hubble Space Telescope showed the object was a true orbiting body.