Of distant worlds

Recent years have offered a steady stream of exciting exoplanetary news. Here's a smattering of such findings I've collected since my last astro-centric post.

That dot? Beta Pictoris b.Let's begin with (IMO) the most visually stunning item, even though very few pixels are involved: an exoplanet, 63 light-years distant, directly imaged by a ground-based telescope. See (from The Register) "ALIEN WORLD Beta Pictoris snapped by Earth's Gemini 'scope." (That's sloppy headline writing: the star, Be...