Astronomers will have a powerful new tool for finding extrasolar planets on Friday, when SuperWASP, a new observatory in the Canary Islands, begins operations. SuperWASP has an extremely wide field of view (2000 times larger than a regular telescope) and is able to measure the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars. It will take enormous surveys of the sky every night, which astronomers will process with a computer. They’ll be looking for stars which dim slightly on a regular basis, which would indicate planets passing in front.