Instrument aims to unveil new worlds by blocking out starlight
March 3rd, 2008 by Buy a Star
Although more than 250 planets are known to orbit other stars, so far no one has been able to get a good look at any of them. That’s largely because a star’s glare is millions of times brighter than a planet, so trying to see a planet next to a star is akin to trying to spot a firefly next to a spotlight, from thousands of miles away. But it’s a problem Oppenheimer and his colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History in New York hope to solve …
Read more from the original source:
Instrument aims to unveil new worlds by blocking out starlight