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: villard@xxxxxxxxx)

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

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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