Scientists have observed a ‘ super-Jupiter ’ exoplanet for the first time.
The planet was spotted outside our solar system using a new technique that combines the light from multiple telescopes.
Researchers from the Paris Observatory in France spotted the planet 29 light years from Earth.
Initial observations suggest that the planet, known as HR8799e, has a stormy atmosphere with swirling clouds of iron and silicate.
Usually scientists have to employ indirect methods to study exoplanets because of the blinding light of their stars.
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On this occasion, they used a technique called optical interferometry that allowed four telescopes to work as one.
The result was an imaging system sensitive enough to disentangle light from the planet and its parent star.
Findings from Gravity, an instrument that combines four light beams from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile, appear in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The planet, known as HR8799e, was discovered in 2010 orbiting a star in the Pegasus constellation.
It is a world unlike any found in our own solar system that is both more massive and much younger than any planet orbiting the sun.
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Sylvestre Lacour, from the Paris Observatory in France and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, said: "Our observations suggest a ball of gas illuminated from the interior, with rays of warm light swirling through stormy patches of dark clouds.
"Convection moves around the clouds of silicate and iron particles, which disaggregate and rain down into the interior.
"This paints a picture of a dynamic atmosphere of a giant exoplanet at birth, undergoing complex physical and chemical processes."
Previous Gravity achievements include last year's observation of gas swirling at 30% the speed of light just outside the massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
