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Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (May 29, 1998 09:56 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) -- A pinpoint of light, discovered by accident on a telescope image, may be the
first of many planets astronomers will find beyond the solar system. It also lends fresh encouragement for those who think there may be life
beyond the Earth.

Susan Terebey, a California astronomer, announced Thursday that she found what may be an image of a rogue planet that had been ejected
from a double star system some 450 light-years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said a rigorous peer review of her findings strongly supported Terebey's interpretation
of the image as a planet, but more sightings were needed for absolute confirmation.

"Although the data are compelling, they are preliminary," said Edward Weiler, a NASA science program director. He said further work may
"prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt."

Weiler said the finding boosted a major effort by NASA to search for other planets and, ultimately to seek evidence of life beyond Earth.

"There is a basic human instinct to find out ... if we are alone in the universe," he said.

If the object found by Terebey is confirmed as a planet, it would become the first planet beyond the solar system to actually be sighted and
photographed. The presence of at least eight other planets has been implied by other researchers who detected a distinctive wobble of the
parent stars, but they have not been seen.

It also would be the first planet discovered by a woman. Discovery of other planets have been credited to male astronomers.

Terebey told a news conference the planet was much too hot to support life, but she said it represented an important advance in the search for
extraterrestrial life.

"This is part of a journey, exploring the universe, looking for intelligent life out there," said Terebey, president of Extrasolar Research Corp. in
Pasadena, Calif.

Weiler said NASA was planning telescopes that would be able to find and analyze Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars.

"In the next 10 to 20 years, we'll get a lot closer to the ultimate goal of finding a planet like Earth with an atmosphere that will support life," he
said.

Other astronomers, although cautiously awaiting confirmation that the object was a planet, hailed Terebey's discovery.

"This is a watershed event," said Anne L. Kinney of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "We have seen for the first time the image of
another planet outside the solar system."

Alan P. Boss, a Carnegie Institution expert on planetary formation, said the discovery "is of historical importance."

"There is a very strong argument that this is another giant planet," said Boss.

Terebey's discovery was an accident.

She was studying infrared camera images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a double star system in the constellation called Taurus.
Terebey said a pinpoint of light some 130 billion miles from the stars caught her attention. She noticed that it seemed to be connected to the
parent stars by an illuminated filament of gas and dust.

After months of studying the image, Terebey said she concluded the pinpoint of light was a runaway planet, two to three times the size of
Jupiter, that had been ejected from the double star system. As it hurtled away, perhaps at speeds of 20,000 miles an hour, it created the wispy
filament, she said. This filament acted like a "light pipe," capturing and glowing with light from the twin stars.

Terebey said she believes the runaway planet, called TMR-1C, may have formed around one of the stars and that its orbit was upset by the
nearby second star. This could have caused it to "slingshot" away from the double star system. NASA uses similar techniques, skimming past
planets, to speed robot craft toward the outer solar system.

Weiler said veteran astronomers who carefully reviewed Terebey's conclusions agreed that her identification of the object as a runaway planet
was the most reasonable.

However, he said there was a chance it was a background star or a brown dwarf, an object that formed like a star but lacked the mass to ignite
a star's nuclear fire.

New studies using the Hubble and the Keck telescopes in Hawaii should settle the question, Weiler said.

By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer