Cheat Sheet

Hello? Anyone out there? We may be one step closer to knowing. For the first time ever, astronomers have snapped a photograph of a another multi-planet solar system. "This is the beginning of a capability that is really going to move the search forward," Peter Michaud of Gemini Observatory told Wired.com. "Now we can refine the technologies and continue the exploration process until we perhaps someday find something more similar to the Earth." Though we've long known other solar systems were out there, we've never been able to see them before. In the past, most were discovered through "spectroscopy," which measures the slight wobble of a host star as it is tugged by orbiting planets. Michaud called the finding "pretty exciting in terms of gaining a perspective on our place in the universe."