Hubble Helps Confirm Oldest Known Planet

	Artist's concept of a rich starry sky with the 13-billion-year-old planet orbiting a helium white-dwarf star and the millisecond pulsar B1620-26, seen at lower left

Long before our Sun and Earth ever existed, a Jupiter-sized planet formed around a sun-like star. Now, almost 13 billion years later, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has precisely measured the mass of this farthest and oldest known planet.

The ancient planet has had a remarkable history, because it has wound up in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a globular star cluster.

The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The planet is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence the first planets were formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude planets may be very abundant in the universe.

For more on the Hubble findings go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0709hstssu.html