HUBBLE IDENTIFIES STELLAR COMPANION TO DISTANT PLANET (STScI-PR06-38)

FOR RELEASE: 1:00 pm (EDT) August 8, 2006

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410-338-4514; E-mail: )

David Bennett
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Ind.
(Phone: 574-631-8298; E-mail: or )

PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR06-38

HUBBLE IDENTIFIES STELLAR COMPANION TO DISTANT PLANET

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has for the first time identified the
parent star
of a distant planet (system name OGLE-2003-BLG-235L/MOA-2003-BLG-53L)
discovered in 2003 through ground-based gravitational microlensing.
Gravitational
microlensing occurs when a foreground star amplifies the light of a
background star
that momentarily aligns with it. Follow-up observations by Hubble in
2005 separated
the light of the slightly offset foreground star from the background
star. This allowed
the host star to be identified as a red dwarf star located 19,000
light-years away.
The Hubble observations allow for the planet's mass and the orbit from
its parent
red star to be determined. In this artist's concept, the rings and moon
around the gas
giant are hypothetical, but plausible, given the nature of the family of
gas giant planets
in our solar system.

To see and read more about this research on the Web, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/38

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international cooperative project
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science
Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.

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