Hubble Identifies Stellar Companion to Distant Planet

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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