β Pictoris b

They are coming thick and fast. Is this yet another exoplanet? Well it's a good candidate. It's is a difficult image to interpret but have a look at the star β Pictoris.

Credit: ESO

The light blue disc has been digitally enhanced, β Pic is at the centre and normally its glare would obscure everything, this glare has been removed. The multi-coloured flares are a ring (or rings) of dust circling the star similar to Fomalhaut but here we are looking exactly edge on. And there it is, just offset from the centre at 11 o-clock, a faint point of light. More work needs to be done to make certain that it's not a foreground or background object, but there is good evidence for a planet. Noticeably it is directly aligned to the rings. Had it been at 1 o-clock a non-planetary explanation would be more likely. Also estimates of its mass are about 8 times the mass of Jupiter, calculated from its brightness and its postulated effect on the ring system. Big, but planetary.

Just have to wait for more data.
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Via the Bad Astronomer, Universe Today and ESO.