Image Is Believed to Be the First Of a Planet Beyond Solar System

After deciphering digitized pictures made by the Hubble Space Telescope last August, astronomers have reconstructed what they believe to be the first image ever captured of a planet outside our solar system.

The putative planet, scorching hot and estimated to be several times as large as Jupiter, lies in the constellation Taurus about 450 light-years from Earth -- comparatively close in astronomical terms.

At a news conference yesterday at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, the discovery team presented an image showing two stars circling each other. A third object was visible, much smaller and dimmer than the double-star system, but apparently linked to it by a luminous trail.

Although as many as eight possible extrasolar planetary systems have been detected since 1995, neither space-based nor ground-based telescopes have revealed images of any planets. The existence of extrasolar planets has been inferred mainly from the gravitational wobbling induced in their parent stars. In a few cases, including that of the star Beta Pictoris, circumstellar dust and rubble disks have been imaged, and planets are believed to be forming in these disks, but no planets were seen directly.

Dr. Susan Tereby, the founder of the Extrasolar Research Corp. in Pasadena, Calif., and the leader of the discovery team, said yesterday that the planet, called TMR-1C, has apparently been expelled from its binary-star system and is hurtling outward at about 12 miles per second. It appears, she said, that this very young but very large planet was created at about the same time as the two sunlike stars it orbited. Its orbit was unstable, however, and it was subjected to a gravitational ''slingshot'' that expelled it from its star system when it approached one of its parent stars too closely. (Spacecraft are sometimes steered into courses that closely pass planets so that they can receive similar gravitational boosts.)

Planet TMR-1C seems destined to be a rogue planet, detached from any star and drifting forever outward. Its fate may be shared by many similar bodies drifting aimlessly through space, astronomers said yesterday.