An artificial eclipse for imaging extrasolar planets
Monday, August 7, 2017 - 05:32
in Astronomy & Space
In our hunt for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, we've found thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. The caveat is that most of these planets have been detected using indirect methods. Similar to how a person can't look at anything too close to the sun, current telescopes can't observe potential Earth-like planets because they are too close to the stars they orbit, which are about 10 billion times brighter than the planets that surround them.