I just thought this was so incredibly cool. First direct observation (photograph) of a planet of another solar system using a new technique with the space telescope. It's Fomalhaut b, just a spec in the picture but it's a Jupiter-sized thing that takes about a thousand years to orbit its central star but it's cool that they got a shot of one. You can see the press release here:
They've detected extrasolar planets before, of course, there are more than a hundred known now, but this is the first photo of one in visible light. The exciting thing about starting to see planets in visible light is that eventually we'll be able to do spectral analysis. Which means you can start to detect things like atmospheric composition. In other words, it may be possible eventually to detect an oxygen atmosphere, which would indicate that life is present.
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