Photo # 1 (Dec 2008)

Fomalhaut (sounds like "foam-a-lot") is a bright, young, star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. In this sharp composite from the Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut's surrounding ring of dusty debris is imaged in detail, with overwhelming glare from the star masked by an occulting disk in the camera's coronagraph. Astronomers now identify, the tiny point of light in the small box at the right as a planet about 3 times the mass of Jupiter orbiting 10.7 billion miles from the star (almost 14 times the Sun-Jupiter distance). Designated Fomalhaut b, the massive planet probably shapes and maintains the ring's relatively sharp inner edge, while the ring itself is likely a larger, younger analog of our own Kuiper Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of icy bodies. The Hubble data represent the first visible-light image of a planet circling another star.

Seeing a planet circling a distant star puts the ebb and flow of life on our own planet in another perspective. Life will continue to evolve and grow elsewhere in this universe, even if humanity suicides and genocides all living things on our planet at the same time.

This raises interesting questions, as well, about what God might be telling the living beings scattered on planets circling around stars across the many light years of space. I somehow doubt they have the hubris to claim - each one of the billions of life forms and cultures - that they are the exclusively chosen ones of God.

And might there be wiser being out there who could advise and support us in moving into new ways of relating to each other and to our planet?
                                      - D.B.