Imaging planets that could potentially sustain life around nearby stars has become a possibility thanks to advances reported by an international team of astronomers in the journal Nature Communications.

The first comprehensive planetary search campaign around the nearest star Alpha Centauri A has just been performed on the VLT telescope of the Southern European Observatory (ESO) using the NEAR infrared instrument (Near Earths in the AlphaCen Region).

The first scientific images of the Herschel Space telescope  have just been released during a scientific conference held at Madrid (Spain) on 17 and 18 decembre 2009, only six months after launch.