Directly Observing Exoplanets Just Got Easier [Astronomy]

So that Gliese Goldilocks Zone planet would possibly not exist . Sad. Cheer up though, because Arizona State astronomers have discovered a new technique which could make spotting exoplanets a piece easier. That’s great, because straight away it’s really frickin’ hard.

The biggest hurdle is light. Once we study distant stars and check out to look their planetary systems, the glare from the star is also millions of times brighter than the rocky planets that can inhabit the warm Goldilocks Zone. This is often the case with our solar system, whose dusty space and glaring Sun potentially obscure all but Neptune from hypothetical alien observers.

What this amazing new research out of ASU does is reduce the glare by stealing one of the crucial star’s own light.

Using these ” ripples” of light the researchers are ready to cancel out among the star’s glare (only on one side, as seen inside the picture). But, what a picture the left side is! That white spot’s a planet, directly observed, orbiting the well-documented Beta Pictoris, visible and glorious as a result of this new technique.

Astronomers expect to take advantage of this system to ensure the 500 exoplanets discovered thus far are the genuine deal (sometimes they’re false positives), and then they’ll use it in finding even more. [ Eurekalert via Discover ]

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This post is tagged: arizona-state, false positives, planetary systems, ripples of light, rocky planets, state astronomers