The search for the perfect coronagraph to find Earth 2.0

Studying exoplanets is made more difficult by the light from the host star. Coronagraphs are devices that block out the star light and both JWST and Nancy Grace Roman Telescope are equipped with them. Current coronagraphs ...

Proba-3 satellite: Seeing in the dark

One of the precision formation flying Proba-3 satellites as seen from the other during ground testing. The pair will fly in orbit relative to one another down to millimeter scale precision, but in order to do this must keep ...

How Webb's coronagraphs reveal exoplanets in the infrared

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has many different observing modes to study planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. One way in particular is that Webb can directly detect some of these planets. Directly detecting ...

Assembly begins on NASA's next tool to study exoplanets

Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. As technologies for studying these worlds continue to advance, researchers may someday be able to search for signs of life on exoplanets ...

Inventing tools for detecting life elsewhere

Recently, astronomers announced the discovery that a star called TRAPPIST-1 is orbited by seven Earth-size planets. Three of the planets reside in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water is most likely ...

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Coronagraph

A coronagraph is a telescopic attachment designed to block out the direct light from a star so that nearby objects – which otherwise would be hidden in the star's bright glare – can be resolved. Most coronagraphs are intended to view the corona of the Sun, but a new class of conceptually similar instruments (called stellar coronagraphs to distinguish them from solar coronagraphs) are being used to find extrasolar planets around nearby stars.

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