For the first time, astronomers have seen the glow of alien planets circling sun-like stars. "This is a new era," says the leader of one of the teams, Drake Deming from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is the first time we have actually seen light." Although planet hunters have bagged almost 150 extrasolar planets since the first one was spotted 10 years ago, until now they have only inferred the planets' presence by measuring the wobble in the host star's orbit or the dimming of the starlight as the planet passes in front of it. No one had yet seen the light from a planet directly.
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