By Ron Cowen
They’ve got the whole world in their hands. Four worlds, actually.
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![Exoplanets in Sight](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/9193.jpg?resize=300%2C224&ssl=1)
Two teams of extrasolar planet-hunters report that they have achieved a long-sought milestone: obtaining the first undisputed images of planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system.
One team, using the Hubble Space Telescope, has recorded a single planet around the massive star Fomalhaut, which lies just 25 light-years from Earth. The other team, using two large ground-based telescopes, has taken images of three planets orbiting a star — the first portrait of an entire planetary system outside the solar system. Details of both findings appear online November 13 in separate articles in Science.