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Despite what marketers of products such as bamboo cutting boards and vegan silk gowns would have us believe, helping the planet doesn't require forking over your paycheck. It's really about conserving, not consuming -- so going green should also save you some.

Don't believe us? Try some of the tips below. These lifestyle changes can really add up, says Jennifer Abel, who manages education programs in finance and nutrition at the Virginia Cooperative Extension's Arlington office.

Bike, walk or run. By using your muscles instead of a car to get you places, you're saving gas and reducing carbon emissions. And if that change means you can skip going to the gym, you can also avoid those monthly fees and conserve the energy it takes to power all those exercise machines.

Drive smart. If you must get behind the wheel, remember this: Speeding, excessive idling, lapses in maintenance, improper tire pressure and hauling unnecessary cargo lower your gas mileage.

Stop eating lunch out. Bringing your food to work in reusable containers might keep as much as $1,500 a year in your pocket and a great deal of takeout packaging out of landfills. Also consider switching from expensive barista-made lattes to home-brewed organic, fair-trade coffee.

Visit the library. Borrow books, DVDs and CDs free -- that's a hard deal to beat.

Go electronic. Pay bills and get statements online; you'll save trees and stamps.

Swap stuff. Skip the mall and arrange a goods or clothing swap with friends and neighbors. (You know what they say about one man's trash.)

Conserve hot water. As much as 11 percent of a home's annual energy costs comes from needing hot water, Abel says. Wash clothes in cold water, take shorter showers, install low-flow faucets and turn down your hot-water heater to 120 degrees.

Slay energy "vampires." Many electronics and appliances draw current even when turned off. Unplug them when not in use or put them on power strips, which can be easily switched on and off as needed.

Read up on the topic. Abel recommends the book "Go Green, Live Rich" by David Bach (Broadway Books, $14.95), as well as the Web sites http://www.eere.energy.gov, http://www.greenandsave.com and http://www.energystar.gov.

(CNN) -- The first-ever pictures of planets outside the solar system have been released in two studies.

The box shows a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. The dot shows the star's location.

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Using the latest techniques in space technology, astronomers at NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture pictures of four newly discovered planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.

"After all these years, it's amazing to have a picture showing not one but three planets," said physicist Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

"The discovery of the HR8799 system is a crucial step on the road to the ultimate detection of another Earth," he said.

None of the planets is remotely habitable, scientists said.

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

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

Scientists estimate that HR8799, roughly 1.5 times the size of the sun, is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. The individual planets in this planetary family are estimated to be seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

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

"This discovery is the first time we have directly imaged a family of planets around a normal star outside of our solar system," said Christian Marois, the lead astronomer in the Lawrence Livermore lab study.

About the same time, NASA astronomers using the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope surprised the space community by locating a fourth planet.

NASA's newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, is estimated to be roughly three times Jupiter's mass and 10.7 billion miles from its host star, Fomalhaut. NASA's images show Fomalhaut b orbiting the bright southern star Fomalhaut, 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 were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star," Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas said. "We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off."

Previous planet-hunting efforts have relied on the traditional Doppler, or "wobble," technique, which works by measuring the gravitational influence a planet exerts on its host, or parent, star. By studying these gravitational "tug-of-wars," astronomers have been able to study a star's velocity or brightness to infer the presence of a planet. iReport.com: Are you an aspiring astronomer? Share your photos of space

To determine whether the faint objects orbiting HR8799 were indeed planets and not other stars, astronomers studying the three newly discovered planets (HR8799b, HR8799c and HR8799d) compared images from studies conducted in different years.

In all the documented pictures, the three objects were found to be orbiting in a counter-clockwise direction around HR8799, proving that they were planets and not just background objects coincidentally aligned in the image.

According to the the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there have been 322 planets found outside our solar system. The latest findings bring that total to 326.

The extrasolar planets found have mostly been gaseous in their composition. Both studies indicate that direct-imaging techniques can only aid our efforts in one day finding an Earth-like planet.