The Gemini Planet Imager has discovered and photographed its first planet, a methane-enshrouded gas giant much like Jupiter that may hold the key to understanding how large planets form in the swirling accretion disks around stars. The GPI instrument, which is mounted on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, is the size of a small car and was designed, built and optimized for imaging and analyzing the atmospheres of faint Jupiter-like planets next to bright stars, thanks to a device that masks the star’s glare. In December 2104, GPI began searching hundreds of nearby young stars, and after a mere month, UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Robert De Rosa began looking at the initial data. He soon noticed something large orbiting a young star in a triple-star system only 100 light-years from Earth. He and graduate student Jason Wang summoned the GPI team, which confirmed the planet. The planet, dubbed 51 Eridani b, is a million times fainter than its star, 51 Eridani, and shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet, which should yield clues as to how the planet formed. To read more, please visit http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/08/13/methane-enshrouds-nearby-jupiter-like-exoplanet/.