coronagraph
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…
JWST Sees Four Exoplanets in a Single System
When the JWST activated its penetrating infrared eyes in July 2022, it faced a massive wish-list of targets compiled by…
Planning is Underway for NASA’s Next Big Flagship Space Telescope
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has only been operational for just over a year, but this isn’t stopping the…
A Last-Minute Addition to the Solar Orbiter Allows it to See More Deeply into the Sun’s Atmosphere
Spacecraft instruments are highly specialized and can take years to design, build, and test. But a last-minute hack to one…
It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes
Detecting exoplanets was frontier science not long ago. But now we've found over 5,000 of them, and we expect to…
By Blocking the Light From a Star, Webb Reveals the Dusty Disk Surrounding It
AU Microscopii is a small red dwarf star about 32 light-years away. It's far too dim for the unaided human…
Dust Might Reveal the Presence of Habitable Planets
NASA's next great space telescope should launch no later than 2027. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a powerful…
Modern Solar Eclipse Science: Huge Coronal Mass Ejection Caught in Action
There’s an old adage that says there is ‘nothing new under the Sun…’ but that doesn’t apply when it comes…
There are Natural Starshades Out There, Which Would Help Astronomers Image Exoplanets
A new study by an international team of astronomers has shown that eclipsing binary stars could act as a natural…
WFIRST Gets its Coronagraph, to Block the Light of Stars and Reveal Their Planets
The coronagraph instrument, which will help NASA's WFIRST mission to search for exoplanets, just passed a major milestone!