(CNN) - The first pictures of planets outside our solar system were released today in both studies.

Using the latest techniques in the technology space, astronomers from NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture images of four new planets orbiting stars discovered outside our system Solar.

“After all these years, it is incredible to have a photo showing not one but three planets,” said Bruce Macintosh physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

“The discovery of HR 8799 is a crucial step towards the ultimate detection of another Earth,” he said.

Unfortunately none of the planets are able to sustain human life, scientists said.

Both sets of research results were published Thursday in Science Express, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A team of American and British physicists and astronomers, using the Gemini North and Keck telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to observe both star HR8799 and to find the three new planets.

Scientists estimate that HR8799, is about 1.5 times the size of the sun, is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The different planets of this global family, is an estimated seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

Astronomers say the star is too low to detect with the human eye, but observers could probably see it with binoculars or small telescopes.

“This discovery is the first time that we have had images directly from a family of planets around a normal star outside our solar system,” said Christian Marois, the chief astronomer in the Lawrence Livermore laboratory study.

Around the same time, NASA astronomers in orbit using the Hubble Space Telescope surprised the space community to locate a fourth planet.

NASA ’s newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, is estimated at about three times Jupiter’ s mass and 10.7 billion kilometers from its host star, Fomalhaut. NASA ’s images show Fomalhaut B orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut in the south, which is said to be 16 times brighter than our sun and 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis (southern fish).

“Our Hubble observations have been incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times weaker than the star, “Hubble astronomer Paul KALAS said. “We started this project in 2001, and our persistence paid off.”

Previous planet-hunting efforts have relied on the traditional Doppler, or “swing” technique, which works by measuring the gravitational influence of a planet exerts on its host, or a relative, a star. By studying these gravitational “tug-of-wars, astronomers have been able to study a star or the speed of light to infer the presence of a planet.

In all images documented, the three objects have been found to be in orbit in a sense against clockwise around HF8799, proving they were planets and not just objects basic aligned by chance in the image.

According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there were 322 planets outside our solar system. The latest results bring the total to 326.

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