First pic of planet outside our system

I dunno how they've been detecting planets before this circling stars outside our solar system, but this is the first ever actual picture taken of such a planet. Sixty three light years away, it shows the planet circling the star.

Ten years in development, this thing down in Chili is taking these pictures.

The instrument, called the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), was designed, built, and optimized for imaging faint planets next to bright stars and probing their atmospheres. It will also be a powerful tool for studying dusty, planet-forming disks around young stars. It is the most advanced such instrument to be deployed on one of the world’s biggest telescopes – the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile. 

“Even these early first-light images are almost a factor of 10 better than the previous generation of instruments. In one minute, we are seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect,” says Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who led the team that built the instrument. 

GPI detects infrared (heat) radiation from young Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits around other stars, those equivalent to the giant planets in our own Solar System not long after their formation. Every planet GPI sees can be studied in detail. more

Perhaps this may go down in history as a very significant photo in years to come? Other than that, it certainly challenges the religious notions that human beings are alone in the Universe.

This is only one planet yes, but there will be many more images coming. To give an idea of how many other planets there are, one only has to consider the infinity of the universe. There are infinite stars, with infinite chances of planets forming, and infinite chances of life forming. To suggest that human beings are the only intellegent creatures in the universe is preposterous. But don't let science get in the way of a good religion eh?