Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager

This figure shows the dust rings around young stars captured by the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey, or GPIES. The rings show a diversity of shapes and sizes, made more extreme by the different projections of the rings on the sky. (UC Berkeley image by Thomas Esposito)

Over the next decade, several very powerful telescopes will come online. Observing time on these ‘scopes will be in high demand, and their range of targets will span a whole host of topics in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosomology.

One of the topics near the top of the list is exoplanets.

But how will astronomers know where to spend their precious exoplanet observing time?

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